Stages
by littlemissdelirious
Summary: Melena Thropp is led to believe that she has delivered a stillborn baby until a note from the midwife convinces her otherwise. When she decides to leave the child in the care of the father and return to her role as wife of the Munchkin governor, she must come to terms with having to watch her daughter grow from afar – and the repercussions of that choice. Musicalverse.
1. Sign

**A/N:** I just want to take a quick second to emphasize that this fic is _strictly_ musicalverse, so book!Mel is the foundation of the characterization, but there's a fair amount of deviation from the dedicated family woman that we all know and love. As well, I'd like to warn you that we'll be dealing with a few canon-compliant deaths down the road…so, you know, Act Two is going to be as rough a ride as it usually is, if not rougher.

Finally, I owe a great big thank you to ComingAndGoingByBubble for being my second pair of eyes. This is the first fic that I've completed in five years and it couldn't have been done without her help.

* * *

 **1\. Sign**

She sits on a green bench with her back to a green façade and a green child at her feet and things are not at all what she imagined they would be.

People bustle by with shopping bags and hat boxes, with pocket watches and briefcases, with their own agendas and no attention to spare, and all she longs for is acknowledgement from one of them. She positions the basket just out of view, so they'll have to go to the effort of craning, and fixes her eyes on those who pass too close.

The briefest glance; the slightest hint of disgust. This is all the provocation she'll need to leap to her feet and proclaim that she has every right to be here, because she has been wronged at every other turn. In twenty-two years, all she's known is being paraded around, shipped off, left behind, and it's culminated in this sad excuse for a family: the man who saw fit to bundle up her baby and send it away before she even closed her legs. Nine months of fuss and nine hours of hell for a child whose state is the only thing worse for Munchkinland's future than dead – unordinary.

Green.

"It must be a sign," the midwife said, over and over. This is mainly her fault.

Melena was content to believe that the baby was stillborn. Despite the kicks she tallied while lying awake at night, despite the dim recollection of a cry at the moment the pain plateaued, despite Frex's queer lack of mourning, she believed it, if only for a paucity of alternatives. When she heaved herself up and demanded, "What is it? What's wrong?" and he arranged his face into a frown and turned, feigning grief in the poorest bit of theatre she ever saw, she allowed herself to believe it was over and went on believing it for three days. That is, until she hauled herself to the dining room, lighter on her feet, still heavier than ever before, and the cook dropped a crumpled note onto her lap at the same time that the porter presented her with a letter on the governor's stationary.

The letter was from Frex, claiming that he would be out on official business in Appleton for a fortnight. She, meanwhile, would be well on her way to the county of Dead Trees, where she could recover from the difficult delivery with the support – _ha_ , she thought and still thinks – of her father. When husband and wife reunited in precisely two months' time she would be willing to try again with better results. It was not a request.

Hands trembling from sheer indignation, Melena then shook out the nearly illegible note from the midwife, who begged for assistance in placing the child, the one Melena had given birth to, the one that was not stillborn, with someone who would be worthy of it. _I've never seen the likes of this,_ the note said, _though she seems to be in fine health, considering._

Melena was stunned momentarily, but it wore off with ease. As her eyes darted between the two messages, the plot – attendant risks and all – unfolded before her with perfect clarity.

She would not be returning home, not immediately. The Crossroads wasn't far off; she would rendezvous with the midwife there and engage a carriage to take her west to Ozmatown, where she would place the little abomination with someone worthy of it. She would interact with potential informants at each stage – the coachman, the wet nurse, various innkeepers – all of whom would surely relay her whereabouts to Frex, but did not. She would surely lose her way, winding up in some seedy area that was best not traversed alone, and not by a young woman no less, but she did not. She would surely be refused an audience on account of being the governor's wife and not the governor, but she was not.

It was a narrative of confrontation and subterfuge, and she the heroine of it, but the plan fell into place without a hitch and she's faced up to nothing – except the verdigris of the baby, which matches the fresh hue of the city to a degree that is almost startling.

 _It's a sign_.

But Melena does not believe in signs. She believes in chaos and coincidence. Even now, squinting down the sunlit court of the emerald palace, it is not the hand of fate nudging her on, but a futile urge to spite her husband or her lover or mankind in general. "A green baby," the midwife said, "on the night of the Wizard's induction," emphasizing _green_ , as if it were really divine intervention and not the poison from the glass bottle that Melena kept locked in her writing desk all these long months.

Chipped mouth, peeling label; it's the crux of this plan, that bottle – the only link between the three of them. Melena has it tucked away in the inner lining of her skirt with the four prayer cards that she's collected from the quack on the corner. She feels it gouging her hip, but she doesn't adjust.

Instead, she leans forward and peers down, looking once more, looking for traces of herself, for a sign, but it's too early to tell. Two eerily-focused black eyes peer back and it wriggles, issuing a pathetic mewing noise that makes her wince. It's an ugly little thing, better suited to a dark alley or the steps of a cathedral, but it's just a baby – decently formed ( _considering_ ), quiet as far as newborns go, and perhaps the only character in this farce who has yet to pass judgement on her.

"Almost time," Melena says, her hand closing tighter around the ticket.

It responds with more whimpering, no doubt yearning for the wet nurse dismissed hours ago. Melena yearns for her too; she does not want to go in alone. She concludes – not for the first time – that she is in over her head. A bell tolls three times in agreement.

When the guard calls the group forth, Melena rises languidly and joins the other ticket-holders at the gate. She stares past the iron insignia, admiring the spires at a closer range, the ascending towers, absently listening to the murmurs of excitement rolling through the party. It takes pull to land an audience with the Wizard of Oz, to hear them tell their stories, but it is entirely worth the effort. He's been known to bestow gifts on those he deems worthy. _And other things_ , she thinks, snorting. At this, they turn her way and she reddens, swinging the basket around her legs to shield its contents from sight.

The guard notices, glowering down. "All personal effects are to be left outside the premises. It clearly states so on your ticket."

Melena's eyes go wide and she wraps a hand around his arm. "Please, sir," she says, drawing him aside. "The midwife said the child won't last the week. If the Wizard can…I don't know where else to turn…I mean no harm…"

She gives the basket a shake. The baby flails.

A worrisome lull quickly terminates in a terse nod and the guard spins on his heel, beckoning the group to follow him under an archway. They amble into a long, narrow corridor – green accents on the walls, green carpeting – and the only occupants of note are two more guards, barring another heavy set of doors. Their eyes immediately drop to Melena's 'personal effect' and the first guard leans in, defending his lenience. They tense, unpleased with the decision, and she smiles sweetly at the one who assumes the task of watching her, as the other launches into a slew of perfunctory instructions.

Don't stand too close. Touch nothing. Avoid speaking unless spoken to.

Melena calculates her moment and seizes it without hesitation. As the new guards twist towards the throne room and the first one retreats to his station, she steps in, affecting solidarity with the group, and then ducks back out. She absorbs a glimpse of the chamber, but it doesn't yield anything particularly clear through the darkness. This is promising. They won't notice her absence.

She scouts a ledge by a window and settles in, waiting for the party to reappear. She drops the basket by her side and presses the blanket in tighter around the baby. It lets out a gurgle that is dangerously close to a cry.

"Oh, shush," Melena snaps, wrestling her own pangs of discomfort into submission. She is tired and bored and heavy, so heavy, in every part of her body. A headache squeezes her temples, and she closes her eyes.

Not half an hour later, the doors swing open and Melena packs herself into the alcove, hardly daring to breathe as the snippets of hushed conversation slip further and further down the corridor. She struggles to place their impressions given the distance, but none dare exceed a whisper and she does not know what to make of their awe – or whether she should regret missing the show.

Either way, the guards conduct the visitors out and disperse, possibly to track down their missing charge, and Melena pokes her head around the corner to confirm that she can emerge without drawing attention. Satisfied, she steals to the throne room and throws open the doors, grunting from the exertion required of her.

It appears to be an extension of the corridor, sparsely decorated, directing focus down the centre. Through the darkness, she makes out the looming form of a massive head, hanging slightly askew. It is designed to be human – the sculpted nose, the mouth, the eyebrows – but the eyes are empty, their bronze sheen is luminescent. The thing is not human at all, and Melena is unnerved by its presence. She skirts it completely, fearing it will spring to life, and then twitches the surrounding curtain aside and sees that it isn't remotely magical. The rear side of the head is flat; a wall of entangled levers and pulleys.

Melena's fingers slide over a protruding handle and she thinks of the man who caught her eye at the market and pulled a foreign coin from her ear, dragging genuine laughter out of her as if it was his sole purpose in life. She remembers how he looked right through her and saw everything there was to see, how breathless she was that day, how alive. The thrill that ran down her nerves when he slipped through the servant door, reeking of ambition, and coaxed so much elixir past her lips that she didn't regain control of her limbs until well after his departure.

They thrive in her, these fleeting images, and she vaguely recalls their colour and their taste when they are juxtaposed against the stark clarity of waking up alone and hurtling back towards reality. Nothing from him, in all these months, as she was left to reconcile herself to Frex, to state dinners and condescending officials, to not being afforded so much as an afterthought. His visit could have been a dream for all the fog that shrouds it, but the pain of the descent cuts like memory.

Melena steps onto the platform, raised like an altar, and sets the basket on the stool without ceremony. She wonders if she should stay and submit herself to his protection anyway – or if he would even be willing to grant it. Perhaps he'll think similarly of the baby. He'll think: this is a mistake. A calamity. A sign, in the worst ways.

It makes no difference. It shouldn't, at any rate. She fishes the bottle out of her skirt and thrusts it into the folds of the blanket. Then there is the makeshift birth certificate recorded by the midwife, who wrote the date of birth on a discoloured scrap of paper and punctuated it with her official stamp. Melena wrenches the crumpled wad from her pocket and a few of the prayer cards follow on the way out. She leaves them scattered on the floor.

Her stomach twists into a thousand individual knots. This is all there is to do; this is the extent of her participation. Whatever he decides it to be, she's washed her hands of the matter.

As she turns, she realizes that she hasn't touched the baby. Not once.


	2. Milkflowers

**2\. Milkflowers**

The birth plays out differently this time.

She melts into the sodden bedding and arches her spine as another contraction sears through her body like a pair of groping hands on the inside of her skin, intensifying the frenzy around her, the frenzy within her, and just about halving her dwindling reserve of strength. She collapses back, wincing, feeling it all and not feeling a thing.

Then again, she reflects, she hasn't felt in quite a while.

Six and a half months, to be precise. She can trace her last lucid moments to the day that Frex mustered the courage to visit the chemist's shop. He returned with a hopeful glimmer in his eyes and a neat little package gripped between white knuckles and refused to reveal its contents until they were served up with her supper.

The preparation was simple.

No dilution, no sugar-coating; they were not concealed in a pastry or boiled with her tea. They were tossed into a bowl, stems and all, mashed a little and then presented as they were, bearing all the flavour of a novel left untouched for twenty years. She chewed them multiple times a day: once after each meal and once before retiring for the evening, twice if she vomited within the hour – a guarantee, even after the initial months of sickness. It was her body rebelling, she knows this now, thinking of the gagging, the cramping, how her mouth dried until her tongue rasped against her teeth like sand paper. But she managed to grind away at the milkflowers just the same. She bought the false promises, however briefly, and by the time she realized that they were rotting her from the inside out, she was too numb to care.

She feels the mattress creak underneath her as she tosses and scours the room for an ally, finding herself no more than dimly aware of the figures hovering by her feet. _Too soon, it's too soon,_ she hears, struggling to concentrate. A man's voice. The doctor's? There's no midwife this time. And they've given her something – too much of it. She wants to cry out, she thinks it is requisite, but nothing comes when she opens her mouth. Frex paces. His face is pale beyond recognition, hidden in his hands.

"I've been looking into alternative cures," he said briskly, the night of the first meeting, as if there was already something wrong with the baby. The one not yet a month in the making, the one that lay beneath the hand that Melena held to her belly.

His veiled threats were routine by then. They lurked beneath every order – _requests_ , he usually called them – from the day he _requested_ that the separation end early and well into the interval between her return and the pregnancy, when he motioned his opponents towards the parlour for refreshments and _requested_ her help in dispelling the tension. Melena was aware that things could get worse for her, but often sought joy in challenging his demands anyway: refusing to join him at meals, siding with his rivals, alluding to the devastating loss of their firstborn and the toll it took on their marriage. It was all done with subtlety and a smile, with the intention of turning Frex the deepest shade of purple that she could wring from him.

And then came the day that a maid discovered the napkins that she was stowing below her bed rather than using and bolted straight to his study. The girl – dismissed by Melena and reinstated by Frex not fifteen minutes later – relayed the news, handing them over as evidence, and all of Melena's carefully catalogued acts of insurrection were repaid tenfold.

She was two weeks late in bleeding when the consultations began. It was doctors first, but not for long, as each one made it clear that he was trained to ward off disease, not ridicule, and most of Frex's concerns were met with disdain. Soon after, he turned to his colleagues, then to the household staff, then to the townsfolk, seeking what advice he could with the limited information he was willing to divulge. Melena, meanwhile, was forced into the sessions that these searches turned up, most of which ended with her skirts bunched around her waist and some fraud poking around below that. "In the spirit of thoroughness," one said, with Frex agreeing heartily. The man's hands were cold against her skin. His examination came to nothing.

Eventually, Frex found himself laying an invitation on the doorstep of a chemist's shop in Wend Hardings. It was the livelihood of a man who had renounced his medical training in favour of natural remedies – _the old ways_ , he later explained – and catered to the lowly and the superstitious, coming highly recommended by the population in the surrounding area. He was quick to respond in writing and courteous in person, attending to their concerns with drawn brows and a thoughtful expression. An examination would not be necessary, he assured them, forming a steeple with his fingertips and proposing his prescription. What they required was something to permeate the womb and – for lack of better phrasing – _dye_ the baby a natural colour.

Melena remembers this moment vividly: the congealing silence and the uneasy glance that Frex sent her way, the feeling of complicity that roused her attention. It was bold of the man to suggest that her husband was gunning for more than a safe and successful delivery. As of yet, no one dared raise the issue of the baby's colour in her presence and she was far more inclined to respect his claims for this. It occurred to her that the idea of a child, a normal child, was not as odious as it once was. She had the scars, after all, and nothing to show for them; she had survived the sickness and the swelling, bested the pain before. She knew what to expect.

She was wrong.

Milkflowers and bed rest. Seven months of it. She's forgotten what it's like to have a body. In all this time, it's been Frex controlling what goes in and where it goes, the baby deciding everything else, and Melena wasting away inside herself. She rides out another contraction, a violent one, and the world shifts and shrinks and blurs.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Frex says.

As they wrench the baby out of her, and half her life leaks out with it, Melena wills herself to die. She deserves the release. He deserves the guilt. A wail pierces the air, and then her eyes close.

When they open, barely, Melena is too weak to call for assistance. She is divided into segments that throb at different rates, a symphony of pain, and she jolts in and out of consciousness, accumulating tiny fragments of information before sinking back into oblivion. Effects have become defects. The baby passes from the doctor to the wet nurse to various specialists while Melena teeters on the brink of death, not entirely sure she wants to fall backwards onto solid ground. Frex does not enter the room, but his voice carries through the door, wavering with desperation as he berates whoever is tending her. Snippets of her doom filter in: _toxic in large quantities, weak pulse, blood loss, so much blood loss_. At first she believes they are discussing the baby and she doesn't much care. Her eyes close.

It feels like years. She wanders the plains of her mind, thinking on her life thus far, until the moment crystallizes and she realizes where she is and why, stumbling headlong into a vitalizing anger. Whatever is left in her veins sloshes around and her eyes shoot open once more, resting on a cobweb that hangs at the junction of the wall and the ceiling. A drum starts in her head that does not stop. She has a perfect view of that cobweb; she's had it for months. She will not be subjected to it another day, even if death has failed to spare her the sight.

She tests her body, bit by bit, until the paralysis is narrowed to her brain. Her toes curl. Her arm folds at the elbow. Her tongue slides across the roof of her mouth.

Her eyes do not close.

She rises like a ghost and creeps into the room of the little tragedy, dipping her arm into the bassinet. A tiny fist curls around her forefinger and life goes on.


	3. Elphaba

**3\. Elphaba**

Nessarose.

This is the child's name. Melena is given no say in it and has never met the relative from whom it is derived, but she approves nonetheless. It's versatile enough to bridge the gap between adorable baby and elegant stateswoman – and Nessa is nothing if not an adorable baby, all dimples and smiles. Melena, however, does not know what to make of her own reaction to these charms. She spends whole days in the nursery during her convalescence, fascinated by every movement, every murmur, and yet she is not swayed to any great affection for her daughter. There are too many factors against it.

To hold her child, Melena must pry her from the nanny, who lingers nearby and extends her arms at an awkward angle, as if readying to lunge to the rescue. Nor is Melena allowed to nurse. She supposes this was determined by the doctor, then agreed to by Frex, for she saw it in both of their faces when the doctor assessed her vitals and speculated that the toxic elements had not yet cycled out of her system. They bowed their heads together, discussing, until the doctor cleared his throat and informed her that incaution could damage the baby.

This is the word he used: _damage._

And so Melena is shut out of her daughter's infancy, just as she was shut out of the pregnancy. She spoils Nessa, naturally, and observes every tiny milestone with a quiet rush of pride, but she is never the first to witness them and does not anticipate them – not at this stage, when teeth stab through barren gums and the rest rely on mobility. There will be no crawling, no tottering first steps, no hard falls, but there will eventually be gibberish and words and sentences. When that day arrives, Melena hopes that Nessa will not find cause to refer to her as anything more than _mmm_.

Besides, Nessa is not lacking for love. Frex withdraws from his governing duties in the weeks that follow the birth, appointing each new member of the household based on his own discretion and personally responding to Nessa's cries at all hours of the night. It surprises Melena that he is not a terrible father and does not cease to be. As Nessa grows, he relaxes into each new phase: reading her stories, stroking her hair, raising her the way you're supposed to raise a little girl – as if she'll be a little girl forever.

Things improve in their marriage too. They settle. He develops a tendency to fret about Melena's fragility without addressing the underlying cause, dancing around her and never too close, but it is far more bearable than the months of torment they inflicted on each other prior to the pregnancy. He's punished her with milkflowers and she's restored the heart in him through Nessarose. It's an arrangement that neither finds comfortable to ponder at length, but the result is almost equilibrium. Only, not quite: she still has leverage.

Melena guards it closely, biding time until a worthy crisis emerges, and commends her own decision when an invitation arrives from the Emerald City. Frex misses the emblem on the envelope and sorts it into his "frivolous" pile to be read later – or by Melena, as is usually the case. She slices it open during lunch and her eyes instantly fall to the date of the function, a chill sliding down her spine. She prepares to make a scene, but a firm _no_ suffices. Frex invents his own reasons – she's ill, she's opposed to tramping around the capital with a toddler in tow (let alone one of Nessa's temperament), she's never left Munchkinland before.

Either way, he fights for her, but the result is the same: the invitation was a formality, this is a summons.

After some debate, Nessa is left behind, all too happy to have the run of Colwen Grounds, and Melena climbs into the carriage without a backward glance. Her mind is racing, her palms are damp. But Frex does not notice her agitation, despite their proximity, and decides to regale her with everything he knows about the benevolent man said to have ended the Great Drought and spared Oz a nasty descent from the frail hands of Ozma. It isn't much to go on, Frex admits, but he's witnessed a thing or two in his dealings with the Wizard's people to poke holes in that fable.

His grumbling doesn't let up until the smoke and the spires of the capital loom on the horizon, when he pauses to acknowledge the view and his complaints follow course. "There's nothing natural about this city," he tells her, as if priming her for something she hasn't seen.

Melena listens to the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels, to the patter of rain against the roof, and swallows the urge to let him in on a thing or two of her own.

Once they arrive at the inn, they separate to freshen up and then reconvene by the carriage, inhaling the oppressive haze of city life. They are not staying an hour longer than is necessary – not with Nessa tyrannizing the staff back home – and both breathe a sigh of relief when they are ushered to a table that is not far from the doors of the ballroom. Frex does a sweep of his surroundings and finds at least ten new things to gripe over, even in the midst of exchanging pleasantries with the Ugaban count to his left. Melena perches on the edge of her seat, waiting for him to notice, to accuse, but he does not stop until he happens to glance down the length of the hall.

If he is surprised to see a green child who is the same age as the one Melena birthed precisely four years ago, the one he expelled from his home precisely four years ago, he gives no verbal indication. In fact, but for the first momentary lapse, he ignores the girl so convincingly that one might be inclined to doubt his memory.

Melena does not have this ability.

She is uncomfortable, furious even, and the heat of it builds and builds until she is writhing inside of herself, suffocating from the smoke, but outwardly composed so as to be another face in the crowd. She nudges the food around her plate and listens to the prattling in her vicinity. She can't bear the prattling and requests another glass of wine. People drum their fingers and mutter theories and wait anxiously for the Wizard to make the rounds with the girl, to rise and present her to the company, but this does not happen. The two of them sit contentedly, speaking between mouthfuls. The girl draws patterns in the condensation on a glass of water, laughing, smiling, gazing up at her father with genuine admiration. Melena tries her best to contemplate the centerpiece, her guts twisting and untwisting.

At first, the speculation is innocent – a ward, perhaps, or adoption. A charity case. Then someone, a Gillikinese margreave, approaches the head table and the information does not take long to circulate. There's no mistaking the introduction, as it is soon ricocheting off every tongue: _And this is my daughter._ What follows is not scandal, it is astonishment. Melena's hands fidget with the cloth napkin spread across her lap. She stares at the centerpiece, at the drooping petals of the roses, and thinks about how lovely Nessa is when she sleeps, how warm she is in those rare moments they spend alone.

Melena does not know this girl's name.

Her heart pounds as she strains her ears, parsing out the hum of simultaneous conversations, but she does not catch it anywhere. There is only mindless conjecture.

"…perhaps in the balloon."

"He managed to keep her hidden for four years and now…"

"They say she has his powers."

"I suppose…an heir…"

"…contemplating a marriage?"

Melena shifts in her seat, stifled by the flurry of unwitting allegations, but it is not until the phrase _foreign concubine_ is deployed that she rises, her chair skidding loudly against the tiles.

"I need air," she says.

Frex grabs her wrist. "I trust you won't make a spectacle of yourself."

She wrenches herself free and retorts with a withering glare. Although there's been no sign of malice from him, no obvious revelling in her distress, she can tell from his tone that she will not be garnering any sympathy. She can practically hear him thinking: _You brought this on yourself_. Or maybe: _This is what you buy with your insolence._ No, that one is her father, speaking to her from the past.

As Melena flees, nearly tripping over a little Vinkun boy scurrying beneath the tables, she feels the floor shake beneath her feet and stabilizes herself against the wall. She turns toward the dais and sees that the little girl has been swarmed in the process of making her own escape. Her eyes go wide and seek out her father, who watches her as the hungry sycophants pack tighter and tighter around them. The girl has never seen a crowd like this before, it's clear, and her eyelids squeeze shut.

 _He's blooding her early_ , Melena thinks.

The floor shakes beneath them again, and the chandeliers flash and die into darkness. A chorus of dismayed cries echoes through the void and china clatters to the floor, and when the lights flicker to life again, the girl is gone. Her father stands in the midst of the crowd, the picture of poise.

"She did that," Melena hears someone say.

"Her father's powers."

Melena reaches for the door handle, but she is obstructed by a man, who grins at her and then gestures towards the empty space where the girl was. "Isn't it extraordinary?" he prompts.

"It's a sign," she says thinly.

"Yes! A sign!"

Melena leaves him to impart her contribution to the next fifty people who happen onto his path and finally makes it out of the ballroom, darting straight to the window and pressing her forehead against the cool glass. The air is fresher out here and she begins to roam, further and further, until the flush in her cheeks fades and she can grasp her thoughts again. She wanders down corridors, her palm trailing over every surface it comes across, and ascends the nearest staircase when she tires of the gaudy green decor.

As she does so, she spots a maid with an armful of fresh linens and follows at a distance. She presses herself against the wall, peering past each door into the empty chambers, and then turns a corner and finds what she has been seeking.

She knows it is the girl's room, though she does not quite know how she is able to intuit this – not without any markers. There's furniture, but nothing bespeaking the personality of a little girl; not one like Nessa, at any rate, who attaches herself to anything pink and frilled.

Melena steps in carefully, trespassing and all too aware of it, but she cannot resist crossing to the bedside table and running her fingers over the book that sits by the base of the lamp. _Alice in Wonderland_ , she reads, scouring her mind for any recollection of the title and turning up nothing. Her thumb reaches the worn corner of the cover and she flips it open, squinting through the sparse light that leaks in through the doorway, for there is something written on the inside.

This is how Melena Thropp learns her daughter's name.

She rubs her fingers over the scrawl, taking in the shaky lines, the clumsy circles, the upwards slant of the letters from start to finish—

"I did the B backwards."

Melena yelps, rent from her daze, and whirls to face the head that is poking out of the wardrobe. Elphaba stares with wide owl eyes and Melena scrambles for the right words to explain her presence. She says, in a strange pitch, "I have a daughter. Almost your age."

Elphaba unfolds herself, blinking.

"She likes dolls. You – you like books."

"I do."

"What kinds of books?"

Elphaba shrugs.

Melena waits.

"My father says I need to talk to people more," Elphaba says, moving out of the shadow of the wardrobe. She is no less green than she was four years ago, but her hair is long and dark now, tangling over her thin little shoulders, and there's an odd daintiness to her movements, as if she considers every step before she takes it.

"Is that why he arranged this party?"

Elphaba nods and then goes still, deliberating. "I don't think I like birthdays anymore," she says. "I've never seen so many people. I was scared."

"You'll learn to control yourself."

Those owl eyes rise to Melena's face, searching, and Melena suddenly feels transparent. "You don't like them either," Elphaba says.

Melena shrugs.

Elphaba waits.

"Do you mind if I sit here a moment?" Melena says.

Elphaba's head tilts in a noncommittal way and she scuttles onto the bed, her back against the headboard, reaching for _Alice in Wonderland_ and propping it open in her lap. Melena switches on the lamp and settles by one of the posts, watching as Elphaba gingerly turns the pages, murmuring the difficult words aloud in stretches of careful syllables. No further acknowledgement passes between them, but they are at peace, far removed from the world of the people two levels below, and Melena feels something open in her chest that she immediately slams shut.

"Well…happy birthday," she says, leaping to her feet.

But she lingers in the doorway, her hand wrapped around the frame. She doesn't know what is wrong until the amendment surfaces to her lips. She says, instead, "Happy birthday, Elphaba."


	4. Blizzard

**4\. Blizzard**

Melena does not sleep.

Not well, anyway, and never for long. She devises strategy after strategy to outwit her own restlessness and learns every square inch of the wall in the process, tossing, writhing, squandering hours as she races around the memory of the day that is over and the dread of the one about to begin.

These hours spiral into entire nights, then entire weeks' worth of nights, and she feels only the balm of relief when she admits that she is no match for herself and gives up. Instead, she leaves a gap in her drapes and stares into the void outside her window, then the light that gathers on the horizon, and sinks so deeply into her cocoon of solitude that the world could be her own. Challenges arise, naturally, when Frex pays her visits – and sometimes there is company of her own choosing, but they are easily chased away with false tales of revenge or idle gossip or the threat of excessive affection. They slip out as easily as they slipped in and her ideal doesn't truly crumble until the maid raps on the door and calls her to breakfast.

There are no more children.

She could very well be barren, for she hasn't been regular since before Nessa, but she tracks her cycle with assiduous care and only issues invitations on nights of reasonable certainty. Frex is predictable to a fault, rearing before every path that winds between himself and guilt, and so there is no danger of him questioning her act. Even so, the trauma of Nessa's birth (and worse trauma of Elphaba's) has left him somewhat disillusioned with the business of child-bearing. He exhibits no desire to endure it again, but does develop a habit of blindsiding Melena with unwarranted displays of consolation, squeezing his fingers around her shoulder and making grand claims about the future. His life has been a study in the traits that make a governor worthy of their office, he tells her, and Nessa possesses all of them.

Melena's entire body stiffens and when she manages to close her lips over the laughter that bubbles to her throat, she refrains from pointing out that Nessa is only four and growing more volatile by the day. The last three councilmen to do so were swiftly removed from their posts.

("A son might inspire more confidence in the people," one had the nerve to say, "or at least an able-bodied daughter." _Able-bodied daughter_. It is a phrase that will haunt Melena for years.)

Anyway, they've reached another stasis in their marriage, the two of them, and she refuses to be the one to overthrow it again. Backed into the corner by the Wizard's cruel joke, she relinquished her last scrap of pride and confessed to the affair somewhere between the outer gates of the Emerald City and the switchover at Mockbeggar Hall. She waited patiently as Frex froze, thawed, and then reached out once more, appealing to her through his worsening opinion of the forces extending from the capital, for it becomes something of a common interest between them. Melena will never again be doted on, she is aware of this, and her shortcomings have left him with a precarious sense of loyalty, but when they take their tea together at the end of the day it's almost a partnership – at the very least they tolerate each other's presence, even going as far as to welcome it on occasion.

("And that means, sir," another says, "that perhaps it is time for you to consider dissolving the marriage.")

Melena welcomes other things too: news, usually, and rumours of merit. Anything that satisfies the itch she has to map out the other life, the one that skulks below the drudgery of her daily routine like a sentient shadow. With the stacks of newspapers that Frex imports from each state and the rotation of chatty dignitaries that make themselves comfortable in her dining room, it's a temptation that she can't shake, so she allows her eyes to stray back in acknowledgement. Everyone seems to have a stake in the conversation that circles the future of Oz, the hands it will fall into, but pitches nothing more than names and platitudes. There's Nessarose, of course, and a prince in the Vinkus said to be wild beyond refinement, a dozen or so sons of Gillikinese margreaves.

And Elphaba. They will all answer to Elphaba.

("A most extraordinary girl – quiet, but astute. You'd be wise not to doubt her capabilities.")

Monitoring the girl with barely restrained curiosity, as she once monitored the father, Melena pinpoints the day when he disappears behind the curtain and Elphaba stands in the light alone. It's no easy thing to grow up when the instinct is to curl in, and the pain of scrutiny is apparent in each snapshot, but Elphaba fares well enough to impress the masses. She holds herself rigidly in front of cameras and stoically during public events; aloof, guarded – as she should be. Melena goads Frex into attending the functions the bring the girl to Munchkinland and tears whole pages out of the papers that he discards, absorbing each photograph until she needs nothing more than an off-hand glance to place it on the timeline of Elphaba's adolescence.

Nessarose blossoms; Elphaba sprouts, all at once, and with all the wild determination of a weed.

Melena herself buckles under the same pressures and lands somewhere in between. Her posture improves, she's gracious with the officials sojourning on the estate, she's mastered every smile that is expected of her, and for the first time in her life people are obliged to take her seriously. She operates her household like a well-oiled machine, developing a sense for each wheel and cog, resolving malfunctions before they happen and with an expertise won through hard years of trial and error. The truly terrible experiences were few and far between, but the blame has a knack for snaking its way back to her and being amplified throughout the state, and she is cognizant of the fact that no one will volunteer corrections when she's in the wrong.

(She frequently recalls sleeping in the library – though she could not bring her eyes to close – on the Lurlinemas Eve that turned up more guests than they had rooms, for she assumed the Count and Countess of Ugabu were spouses rather than siblings.

Or the incident in Traum that saw them arriving for a ball and finding not a thread of formal wear in their trunks. Melena was left to contemplate her failure while Frex acquired suitable garments for himself and set out alone. The next day, their hosts expressed sympathy over the illness that kept her from attending, remarking that she did indeed look flushed.

Worst of all – the episode with the High Duke of Kvon, that bastard, who snickered for hours when she gave the cook leave to retrieve a visiting in-law and a storm impeded his return. Melena didn't think to have someone else on retainer and suffered greatly for it, making silent pleas to the wretched cuckoo clock on the mantle. The duke leaned in towards Frex and muttered, "At least she's charming," and Frex replied with, "She lost her mother to the Glikkun Flu at a young age," and neither stooped to addressing her directly.

Her eyes burned with tears of shame for days.)

Even now, seven years on from her vows, she knows that she juts into the former flow of life at Colwen Grounds like a boulder and that majority of the staff resents her for it, but she studies their habits and sands her edges and perseveres in her medium until it is a happy one, until her diversions are smooth enough to be taken as natural. Her judgement is deferred to because it is worthy of deference: she knows which linens to request, who merits what china, the crops that are in season and the dishes they best lend themselves to. She buys the flowers herself, tops up drinks herself, arranges the soirees herself, and when the governor deposits his colleagues at the train station their impressions of the Thropp family home are more wholesome than they've been in decades. Divorce is no longer in question. She is valuable, if not content. She is a wife.

She is not a mother – not yet. Days are long, but the months compound in an instant and Nessa is seven, and then ten, and then fourteen. But first she is five, and Melena is baffled by her, cataloguing the tics and the tantrums and making no headway.

Nessa, for her part, is a keen little thing, loving and vicious by turn, with a pair of innocent hazel eyes that could convert the most practiced cynic. She insists on smelling every flower that she passes and pressing handprints into every pristine bank of snow. She hates the prospect of bathing and then splashes about for hours. She thrives on attention, but must be bribed into abiding strangers, and exercises her power over them as though it comes to her as naturally as oxygen.

Melena observes all of this, unable to think of a time when she didn't find the little girl captivating, but endearing is a harder trait to access. They were one for seven months and Nessa wears Melena's features better than Melena herself does, which is surely proof of that, and still Melena can't determine where to begin construction on the bridge that parents are meant to cross at the sound of the first cry. She makes herself available, contorting her emotions every which way, but she never finds Nessa's powers of manipulation any less alienating. They break over everyone – Frex, the nanny, the tutor, the guests – except for Melena, and so she is left on the outside, fending off the uneasiness that swallows every slat that she tries to string over the abyss.

It all comes to a head when Nessa's sixth birthday dawns and a craftsman is hired to assemble a wheelchair, which is quickly inspected and approved and concealed in a shed on the furthest reach of the grounds. Somehow seeing Nessa carried from room to room is less painful, so they prolong it. But Nessa is getting heavier and more petulant. Their silence has fostered her belief that it's merely a delay, that one day she will swing her feet onto the cold floorboards just as she's seen them do, and her impatience is erupting beyond their control.

For a time, Melena presides grimly over many of these outbursts, and then she tires of doing so and supplements Nessa's frustration with her own, refusing to draw the farce any further. On the day that Frex concedes and rolls the wheelchair into the light, she sees that the arms that once gleamed with varnish have accumulated a thick layer of dust. They swipe their fingers through it and look away.

Naturally, it is Melena who is tasked with introducing Nessa to her condition.

Frex is present, yes, but he waits for Melena to hoist Nessa onto the seat and close her hands around the wheels. Nessa scowls and demands _but why_ and Melena is confident in this moment that the meagre progress she's made with her daughter is lost. She should have fought against Frex and his requests and his cures, she should have fought, and she deserves to be stranded, but she watches Nessa throw her arms around Frex and thinks _this is his fault_ just the same. Even after the pointed animosity lapses and Nessa no longer behaves as if her mother camouflages perfectly with the wall, they do not recover, not really, and Melena carries her heart through the halls like a heavy stone.

It is not until Frex is marooned in Appleton by an unrelenting blizzard and Melena is obliged to answer the calls ringing out into the night that Nessa deigns to remember they are family. They've learned to coexist again, but it's all been laid bare – the strain, the distance, the lens of skepticism through which they regard each other. Melena knows that there are no nightmares and doesn't pretend otherwise, Nessa knows that she knows, yet they end up in the same bed anyway.

Transferring her in, Melena fluffs the pillow beneath Nessa's head and turns the lamp down, and it is then that Nessa airs her predilection for interrogations at midnight: but why isn't the gardener's daughter in a wheelchair, but why does she have to be governor when she grows up, but why doesn't she get to have siblings like other girls do, but why, but why, but why. Melena is evasive at best, dishonest at worst, and terrified by Nessa's ability to read the darkest parts of her soul.

She waits until Nessa slips a thumb into her mouth and the gentle rasp of breathing shallows, then turns towards the window and watches flurries wheel about the skeletal tree branches, glittering in the light from the groundskeeper's hut. She thinks of the life she returns to when she can't make sense of the one she lives: the smoke and the spires, the foreigner with whom she has three days but seven years of history, the girl in the clippings that she stores in the bottom drawer of her desk – straight-backed, alert, tall for her age and too skinny. Nessa does not have a place in that life. Melena does not know how to feel about that.

And then she does.

When Frex bursts through the door with heaps of snow on his shoulders and his face frozen into a grimace, Nessa calls for him with unrestrained joy and the jealousy that gushes into Melena's veins alerts her to the change. Nessa retreats to his chambers that night and Melena misses the tickle of whispers too close to her ear and the sinless secrets they bestow. She misses the feeling of a little face pressed between her shoulder blades, cold feet against her shins, and the way her heart swooped when Nessa leaned in and murmured, "I love you, Mummy," before nestling in and nodding off.

They cleave for a day and collide the next, clinging harder, and Melena concludes with certainty that there will be no more solitude; for better or for worse, her world has a population of two. Even three days on, when Nessa shrieks about having to eat her vegetables before her dessert and Frex enables the madness, Melena does not recoil into herself. She realizes that the Nessa who throws fits over green beans and the Nessa who slaves over family portraits for hours, unveiling them with a flourish of pride and a semi-toothless grin, are parts of one whole – and one that she may very well love.

("Thick as thieves," Frex remarks, finding them giggling in the library. They've been there for hours.)

All at once, she is Nessa's mentor, her confidante, her best friend and her worst enemy, and something deep within Melena relishes every moment of it. She resolves to be present, to let the other life ride a gust of wind into irrelevance like so many aimless snowflakes.

This attitude does not last long.

In fact, it doesn't last a day.


	5. Parents' Day

**5\. Parents' Day**

It falls into place when Nessa declares that she will be commencing her university education a year early – and abroad, no less – but Melena does not yet know this. All she knows is the winter sun streaming through the gauzy curtains and the seven application packages staring up at her from the table and the horror on Frex's face, how he tries time and again to talk Nessa down, only to realize just how deeply those pretty new heels are dug in.

Nessa, at this time, is sixteen and determined as anything. Melena, at this time, is thirty-nine and rediscovering what she hasn't had to acknowledge in a long, long while: that her daughter is something completely separate from herself.

It is almost painful to think of Nessa, who was six years old what seems like a month ago, tugging at the cord until it chafes their palms, but worse to think of herself as the tyrant who won't let go, so when Nessa looks her square in the face and proclaims _this is the only thing I've ever wanted_ , Melena melts. She plasters a mask of neutrality over her confused emotions – joy, surprise, pride, jealousy, something so unfamiliar that she cannot place it – and resolves to help Nessa to her feet. This counterbalances the belligerence from Frex, who continues to overlook what is owed and sputter meaningless words like "forbid" and "unthinkable" and "insanity" until Melena wearies of bidding him to calm down and props their daughter alone.

For months, she hangs about in doorways, watching as Nessa chews pens to gnarled bits, scribbling sentences and then scribbling over them with an anguished groan, toiling over each essay until it is perfect and then toiling a little more. She keeps a record of the forms and questionnaires that Nessa completes, the ones that she completes, and the letter she encloses with each application to request a general sense of the arrangements that can be made for Nessa's care. Melena does this, and yet it is not until an envelope from Shiz University passes from Nessa's hand to hers that the strange emotion dogging her every contribution throbs forcefully in her chest, overtaking the excitement. Her eyes rake over the word _acceptance_ and she places it as fear.

She thinks of Nessa on her own.

She thinks of Nessa, who has never crossed the borders of Munchkinland, who has never maintained a friend beyond the cook's nephew and the gardener's daughter and her own parents, who expects life served on a silver platter with a fresh sprig of parsley in its mouth, on her own.

But then she thinks of Nessa, who is to govern the largest state, who worms her way into the hardest hearts and writes essays that incur scholarships from reputable schools, who belongs to a generation of girls that will go to university and will not marry unless it suits them, who will have ideas instead of children and won't know a damn thing about china or linens, on her own – and in those moments it seems as though they are on the right course after all.

By the time Nessa crumples under the burden of her own doubts, staring down her course enrolment package with watery eyes, Melena finds herself so well-versed in this rebuttal that she takes minutes to lure her daughter out of their grip and devotes hours to it anyway. At nightfall, their cheeks glisten with the wet tracks of tears, but Nessa is utterly convinced that she is not so much lost as wandering, and smiles in spite of her hiccupping sobs. She makes her mother swear to write every other day, counting the sheets of paper she'll require until the Lurlinemas holiday, exhorting her to describe everything there is: the weather, the politicians at their table, the latest crisis in Appleton. Melena squeezes Nessa's hand and promises to do so without the faintest bit of irony, thinking all the while that she wants Nessa to love and learn and grow, but not to change, not even a little.

The trunks get packed, though, and the sentimentality recedes, and when they tread the cobblestone walkway to Nessa's college it feels rather less like an ending.

Nessa is raring to go – as she's been since the driver announced their passage into Gillikin – and deserts Melena almost immediately, finding a niche in the first group of girls that diverges from the overflow of anxious parents. They are a wild-eyed and wary population, like caged animals, but coiffed and overdressed, and Melena suspects it is only the affluent families who have been invited to tour the campus and greet the headshiztress. She wades in opposition to them, hoping to recover her ally, but is soon caught up in the seething current of bodies and ferried to some parlour or other, where she helps herself to a cocktail and wanders aimlessly, altering her course when a familiar face peers her way and focuses.

Eventually, she is wedged in the corner of the room, between an armchair and a hearth, with the figure in the seat obstructed by the wings. Melena rocks onto her toes for a better glimpse of the heavy tome on their lap, but this betrays her scrutiny.

The face that turns up to confront her, eyes flaring with exasperation, is green.

Melena's grip tightens around the stem of her glass. She hasn't seen Elphaba in two years – some unnecessary banquet after the refurbishing of the Yellow Brick Road, she thinks, or perhaps the new dam by Restwater – and for whatever reason she feels compelled to apologize for the pomposity of that event, of this event, of anything, but Elphaba is quicker on the draw.

"My father isn't here," she says.

Her mouth opens and then closes dumbly, the blood drains from her face, and Melena is sure that this moment, right now, is the end of the charade, surely she has been caught out. But she hasn't been, because Elphaba drops her eyes and continues without investment:

"Whatever agenda you wish to push should be in written form. However, I make no promises that it will reach him." She tugs a crumpled sheet of paper from the inner fold of the book's cover. "And if you wish to distinguish yourself by merely sending your regards, you may add your name to this list of thirty."

Heart beating steadily again, Melena regains her footing and suppresses a smile. "Well, I didn't have an agenda, but now I do: his daughter has no manners."

"Frankly, I did not wake up this morning expecting to be harassed by a whole nation's worth of sycophants." Elphaba closes the book on her finger and gazes into the crowd converging around the headshiztress. "I don't think I've been addressed by name a single time. Unless it really is _Daughter of Oz_ and no one's bothered to inform me."

"It's only fitting for Parents' Day, isn't it?" Melena says blithely. "People love to define you by who your parents are."

Elphaba snorts. "Or _where_ your parents are – which is not here, having his own soles treated by the bootlickers." She flips open the book and shrugs. "I suppose I just hoped otherwise."

Melena is struck by how casually Elphaba admits this and frowns, her brows knitting. "Your father isn't here," she says. "Why come?"

"I still have to register." Elphaba waves at the mess of papers splayed by the armrest, one gust of air from scattering off the surface and underfoot. Melena flattens a bent corner that is protruding from the pile and thinks of Nessa's package, carefully ordered and parcelled, while Elphaba continues, "He says it's past time that I learn to stand for myself."

"He's stranded you."

"According to him, it's my education launching itself a day early."

"Huh."

Elphaba nods at a group of girls, Nessa's group, who have made their way in from outside. "I'm to square my shoulders and charge into circles like that and be _cordial_."

"Not all of them are terrible," Melena says half-heartedly, but their eyes meet and part again and they share a laugh until they have studied the girls for long enough to feel that the joke is on them. Clustered as they are in their puffy dresses, the group resembles a lurid bouquet, and Elphaba sees vividly what she is to be excluded from. Melena, meanwhile, sees that Nessa's niche is not a niche, for she does not fit, and is willing to bet that the parents of those girls have not mandated cordiality. It creeps up again, the fear that resides in the pit of her stomach, and she rests a hand on the chair for support.

"They seem to like her," Elphaba tries.

The prickle of a stare severs the trance and she glances down at Elphaba, who is ducking her head and picking at her sleeve in a manner too obvious to be misleading. A smile pulls at Melena's lips, then dissipates as she reverts to watching Nessa, with the finger that is already twisted into her hair, with her sweet face and her bright eyes and all the secret thoughts darting around behind them.

"Seeming is a talent for them," Melena says. "They'll eat her alive."

"I'm not good at artifice either."

This time, Melena can't keep her attention from flitting between the two girls and resting on the latter: Elphaba, who will never be waiflike again, with her sharp features and glasses and the effect of shrewdness that she derives from her father. But arresting eyes that are dark and distant and aged twenty years by an ache that is as tangible as tears and undoubtedly Melena's own.

"They've only just met, haven't they?" Elphaba says. "What could they possibly be talking about?"

"What could _they_ possibly be talking about?" Melena replies, gesturing towards Madame Morrible and the throng of parents vying for her attention – Frex chief among them, brandishing Nessa's papers like a flag. She hasn't paid them much mind since her entry, but she does not like the turn this conversation has taken.

Elphaba swings around to peer at the fray. "What do you mean?"

"Why would anyone spend more than thirty seconds in the presence of that woman?"

There is no stance to be discerned from Elphaba's reply. "My father insisted that I enroll in her sorcery seminar. He speaks very highly of her."

"Does he?" Melena pauses, as if this generates anything other than more distaste. "I'm not sure…there's something off about her. Something fishy."

For a moment, Elphaba's mouth goes wide and she is scandalized, having borne witness to blasphemy against the woman whose word is law on these premises. It is a losing battle, however, and her eyes stay fixed on Morrible's clammy face and ridiculous bustle until Melena gets a muffled laugh for her efforts. Shamelessly, she capitalizes on the imagery and says, "Do you think she speaks as she does in the acceptance letter?"

"It would certainly befit our rank as _tomorrow's leaders_ to hear those phrases aloud."

Melena affects a deeper voice, inspired by Morrible's few booming proclamations, and hauls the absurd wording of Nessa's acceptance letter from the foggy reaches of her memory. "Ah, yes, but would it—" a flourish, "— _encouragerize_ your potential? After all, that is the _raison d'être_ of Shiz University. You, Elphaba Diggs, are in the _flower_ of your youth, the future is a path _untrodden_ , the…what was the next part? I'm drawing a blank."

"The world a garden of challenges, which you will master, and the air is the knowledge that abounds around you."

Elphaba is solemn when she relays this, forsaking the sporadic emphasis, and Melena knows that the bit is over. She smiles slyly and says, "Nessarose is not the only one to have read her letter a hundred times, I take it?"

"A hundred?" Elphaba scoffs. "A thousand, I think. I carried it with me for months. I thought it would help me…stand for myself, I guess. I thought it would give me power."

 _You have power_ , Melena thinks, remembering the floor shaking under her feet and the chandeliers swaying, remembering the applause of the Munchkin audiences and the unbridled praise in the headlines. "You can handle Morrible," she says.

"She's not the one who scares me," Elphaba says. Her gaze strays back towards Nessa, towards the blonde ringleader, towards the adoring cohorts and their shrill giggles. "There's _nine_ of them already, and in _one_ group. From _one_ college."

"A garden of challenges," Melena tries.

"Best left unmastered."

Melena sighs. "And where do you propose to sleep?"

"A private suite, I think. If the papers are done right." Melena's eyes lower once more to the mess by Elphaba's elbow. "When that inevitably falls through…well, there are fourteen libraries on campus. I'm sure I can stake out a nook in one of them."

"Private suites had to be requested in advance, I believe."

"Oh." Elphaba laughs hollowly. "I wasn't expecting it to inevitably fall through quite that fast."

Melena bites her lip and thinks _nine of them_ and imagines the girls pairing off while Nessa chokes on their dust, and hears it in the voice of Elphaba, who is too young to be world-weary but sounds it anyway, who will be scorned privilege as soon as the parents depart, green and illegitimate and prone to provocation. She pictures the two of them, opposites and so very much the same, burgeoning on womanhood and really just little girls in disguise, and blurts, "Maybe we can strike a bargain."

She's not sure if it's fair to foist Nessa on Elphaba, or vice versa, but she knows in this moment that it has to be done. "I can procure you a roommate," she says. "I can get you out of here in a reasonable amount of time. Hell, I can even face Morrible."

"And what will I be facing?"

"My daughter's wrath," Melena admits, albeit with deceptive flippancy. "It's no small thing. An educational experience, even – diplomacy and whatnot."

Elphaba hesitates. "What if I do something wrong?"

"Believe me, she'll let you know exactly what you're doing wrong."

"She'll hate you."

"She makes that claim four times a day."

A sheepish twist curves Elphaba's mouth upwards and Melena can see that she is relaxing into the idea. Her fingers fan over the pages of the book in her lap, as if rediscovering that it is there, and she says, "My father always told me that Munchkins are difficult to deal with."

"Is that so?"

"Oh yes. He said of all the thorns headed for my ass, the Thropps would prick the worst." She blushes. "I mean—" Melena leaves her to flounder. Elphaba says, "Well, at any rate, the Daughter of Oz and the Daughter of Munchkinland…if I were that kind of person, I would almost call it fate."

Melena ignores this, gathering the papers from the side-table and sorting what she can from what she sees. She feels the weight of Elphaba's eyes and wants to say something more, end it on a less discordant note, but she can think of nothing worse than encouraging Elphaba to be that kind of person – not when there is only chaos and coincidence and so much spite.

"I…" Melena starts, and then she sifts past the list of sycophants, thirty strong, and tugs it from the pile. "I believe this belongs to you."

"Oh." Elphaba hastily reaches out, but overextends her arm, grasping the page by the corner that Melena is holding. Their thumbs brush, barely, sending a shock through Melena that isn't an actual shock – though it has the same effect – and she only just manages not to flinch, suppressing it and mustering a shaky smile to smooth over the rupture in her composure.

Elphaba folds the list, then folds it again, and again, and gives no indication of a similar upheaval. She says, "If you do have an agenda, I suppose it's only fair that I pass it along to my father."

"I don't have an agenda."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Melena says, smile solidifying, brightened by authenticity as Elphaba stuffs the sheet away and looks up. The ache is gone but their eyes are still the same. "Only, do give him my regards."


	6. Home

**A/N:** Checking in to thank everyone who's been following the story thus far! I'm so thrilled to be sharing this chapter with you, as it's my favourite of the bunch. I had plenty of fun with Overdramatic Nessa, and the ending was actually the only point where I cried while writing...which is a little odd, given what's coming (or maybe totally justified because of it?). Anyway, I hope you find it enjoyable!

* * *

 **6\. Home**

Nessa's vexation wanes and she writes almost daily in her rushed, mercurial style. She begs to be removed from Shiz no less than six times in the first month, but it's paradise as often as it's purgatory, so Melena concludes that adjustment is well underway. She also concludes that a large part of this is owing to Elphaba, who fields the silences, the whining, and the outright abuse, proving a pair of capable hands for Nessa to have fallen into and another willing subject for those ever-grasping claws.

By the autumnal turn of the leaves, the girls are devoted to each other, and Nessa is so thrilled with the friendship that Frex can no longer fault Melena for declining Madame Morrible's offer to have Nessa stay in her personal apartments. He even commends it, albeit warily, as if reserving his right to revoke it at the first sign of trouble.

There isn't any.

The first term nears completion, snow descends on Munchkinland, but not yet on Shiz, and Melena curls up with the letters clutched inches from her face. She passes her fingers over the sentence fragments and the creases and the multitudes of exclamation points, weaving the glimpses into a comprehensive vision and marvelling at the independence it affords them.

She imagines the dormitory: cramped and sloppy, with papers strewn every which way and stacks of books tipping at perilous angles. Elphaba stomping around at all hours of the night on the verge of some revolutionary thought. Nessa participating lazily in the dialogue, penning her latest letter when she should be catching up on her readings. Elphaba is an absolute trial to live with, to hear her account, but the grievances are petty and light-hearted, designed to distract from the admiration that lurks beneath. _She's too punctual_ , Nessa writes, along with Melena's personal favourite: _She's so annoyingly studious._

After finals, Melena reaches out to make Lurlinemas arrangements, but Nessa refuses to budge from Gillikin until she has her results – a stipulation that Melena suspects she's borrowed from Elphaba – and they ultimately meet her halfway, at a resort by Munchkin Rock, so as to spare her another bout of homesickness. Nessa glows and gushes and then she is gone, leaving Melena blinking in her midst, trying to process what it is about her daughter that has changed and left her with the impression of having met someone she doesn't know.

(Confidence, Melena will later deliberate, or perhaps a total lack of it.)

The second term slides by even faster, though it is a whirlwind of developments: soon there is a Galinda and then, disconcertingly, a Boq and every so often a Fiyero. There's dancing and drama and some strange episode with a hat that leaves Melena bristling. There are finals, once more, and a good deal of agonizing over them. ( _Who let me believe that 'Introduction to Philosophy'_ _was a good idea?_ Nessa writes.) There are goodbyes. And then there is a final letter that not so much asks as informs the Thropps that their daughter will be returning home with company.

They wait for the girls on the platform.

When the train surges into the station and the smoke dissipates, Melena searches the sea of stolid Munchkin faces until she spots the three of them, her heart jumping into her throat. They have grown, but they are young, so young. Nessa greets her parents with hugs. Galinda is incandescent, wide of smile and firm of handshake, bubbly and warm and flawlessly genuine even when she is not. Elphaba remains diffident, hanging back during the exchange of pleasantries with a book tucked tightly into the crook of her arm. (Melena notes this and smiles to herself. She has prepared the guest room with the most natural light for Elphaba and outfitted it with a strong lamp besides.)

At dinner, they begin talking and do not stop for anything.

Melena has heard every story through Nessa, but she listens to them again in Galinda's voice – and sometimes Elphaba's, when she unfurls from her thoughts and chimes in with a dose of sarcasm or an amendment she deems crucial to the integrity of the narrative. From what Melena gleans, she bears immense disapproval for Fiyero and is clearly dubious of Boq's intentions, but disposed to hiding it in Nessa's vicinity. She is enthused by her history classes, less so by Morrible's sorcery seminar, and shamelessly invested in her political opinions, to the point that she gets into it with Frex a few times. ("You do realize, sir, that you are being ruled by a migrant, don't you?" she says, shortly after charging him with thinking in terms of _antiquated hierarchies_.) Melena is riveted by these performances. The three girls are living a life that is utterly alien to her and yet she sees figments of herself everywhere she looks, as if she's shedding.

They wander the grounds, the markets, the town square, and eventually settle in the orchard, in a circle of sunlight, animatedly discussing nothing and everything. Galinda is always careful of her conduct, feigning the serenity that Nessa longs for her to have in Munchkinland, but when she receives a letter from Fiyero and announces that she will be departing for the Vinkus, her façade slips. She extends the invitation to Elphaba – _Fiyero wouldn't mind, I'm sure_ – and is met with only wordless scoffing, to which she pouts and concedes until her next attempt. Melena stumbles upon one such discussion, lingering by the door of the dining room while Galinda frames her entreaty like a gift, their long-sought escape, and then demands a proper explanation for Elphaba's recalcitrance.

"But _why_?"

"I like it here," Elphaba says simply, and that is that.

When Galinda does leave, she embraces Nessa, then Elphaba, and Melena is astonished by the depth of their friendship. She almost regrets the zeal that drove her to arrange for the ticket herself, to assign three members of the staff to packing, to indulge the impulse that's wanted Galinda gone since Fiyero granted the opening. But the train gathers steam, vanishing with a roar, and the guilt vanishes alongside it, because then they are home, sitting down to lunch together, and when they are done Frex exits to draft an address on the new land taxation system. Nessa retreats to her room for a nap. Elphaba drifts off to the library. Melena situates herself at her desk to work through her correspondences, and everything is right, perfectly right.

This is a risky way of thinking, however, and Melena doesn't delude herself for long. She knows how fragile this peace is, that it can be fractured in a few words, perhaps in the form of another letter, and lives in a state of apprehension until the burning question of Elphaba's departure scalds her tongue out of stillness.

Pulled aside, Nessa says bluntly, "She won't be leaving. She's quarrelling with her father."

"Why?" Melena pries. "About what?"

Nessa leans in conspiratorially. "After finals, she left for the Emerald City and returned within three days. She won't talk about it, but she went straight to the registrar to inquire if it was too late to enrol in summer courses. I couldn't bear the thought of her alone the whole holiday, so I invited her to stay."

"She didn't ask for herself?"

A shrug. "Elphaba never asks for anything."

Over the course of the month, Melena will revisit this statement multiple times. Nessa is more comfortable with Elphaba, more inclined to leave her behind and tail Frex into town, which leaves Elphaba open to scrutiny. Melena watches the way that the girl eats (meticulously – one food group at a time, allowing for no cross-contamination), how late she stays up (too late), what she wears (frocks ranging from frumpy to lugubrious), and tells herself that she could not have broken the habits even if she was around to try. Elphaba is admirably incorrigible and endlessly peculiar: all clumsy charisma and self-deprecating wit. Hard to like but easy to love.

And, contrary to Nessa's claims, she is rather quiet.

Melena finds it fascinating that a girl who has trained herself to cut such a fierce first impression should soften into a shyness this profound, but Elphaba appears most tranquil on her own. She takes to the library, to sprawling along the sofa with her nose in a book, her hand blindly scrawling notes, and Melena takes to inventing subtle-but-not excuses to interrupt – peering in, mainly, or poking around without aim. Sometimes she incurs a peripheral glance, but often it is nothing, not until the day that she is driven to the third floor for a legitimate reason.

As she crosses to the shelves, seeking a map that Frex has accused her of misplacing, she is stalled halfway by the sight of Elphaba at the window – arms wrapped around her torso, hands on opposite elbows. She is taller and thinner than Melena ever was, but the outline of her is close enough to stun, transfixing Melena as a dam breaks and twenty years flood in.

Melena's hand fumbles over the table, knocking over an inkwell. Elphaba whirls around, tensing, and then relaxes and says, "What direction does this window face?"

"East." Melena thinks. "No…west, I believe."

"It looks like a painting."

"It does," Melena agrees, righting the inkwell – sealed, thank goodness – and joining Elphaba. The treeline is thicker than she remembers, the corn crops are bean crops, but the hills roll towards the horizon with the same complacency. "I used to spend hours here. I didn't think there could be anything more mundane. I thought: there's not one thing about this view that makes me feel something."

"There are worse things than mundane," Elphaba says.

"Naturally," Melena says. "But wisdom is no easy feat when you're twenty-two and pregnancy has made a pulp of your brain."

Elphaba shifts, rocking on her heels. "Do you still feel that way?"

"Pregnant? I should hope not."

"Unsatisfied, I mean."

Melena clings to levity, though the word tugs at her very core. "Sometimes. I try not to entertain those thoughts."

"Does Nessa?"

"Do you?"

Elphaba shrugs. "I used to wish that I had roots. You know…a history, an ancestry, a homeland that I could fathom. Somewhere the links the past and the future. I would've traded my soul for proof." She bites her lip and thinks on her answer. "I don't feel that way anymore. Between Shiz and Munchkinland, I've lost my sense of home."

"Surely there's no need to be that dramatic," Melena says.

"I didn't mean it negatively. It's freeing, actually." Elphaba runs her hands along her forearms. "Have you read the work of Reginalf Pantherin?"

Melena laughs. "I don't recall the last time I read something that wasn't one of Nessa's letters or a newspaper, so I expect not." She gestures towards the sofa.

Elphaba glances back, as if startled that it's there, and perches on the edge, one leg tucked under her and one swinging like a pendulum. She says, "He's a Tiger, from Gillikin, who conducted a study on the habitation tendencies of every known species and concluded that 'home' is a concept impressed on Animals by humans."

"But animals have homes, don't they?"

"See, we tend to think that, because they have dens, and colonies, and territories, but if those are destroyed, they can adapt without much distress," Elphaba says. "They find another. They rebuild. They move on, provided that they have the space to do so." She stops abruptly, as if realizing that she's toeing the line of no return.

"Go on," Melena urges.

Elphaba's eyes flick up at her almost suspiciously. "Well, essentially, he concluded that 'home' is a construct borne of human insecurity. It's been one of the most divisive academic controversies of the last fifty years. Critics lashed out instantly, claiming it was discriminatory drivel."

"All human, I assume?"

Elphaba nods.

"That proves his point, doesn't it?"

"Exactly! Doctor Dillamond said I was being uncharitable, but the responses did nothing but corroborate the findings. Men have disastrously fragile egos." Elphaba pauses again, fists scrunching in her skirts, and then says, "But there's another aspect to it – it begs the question of whether Animals are more animal than human. It puts the difference on a scale and claims it's measurable, and critics didn't like that either. Critics from both sides."

Melena frowns pensively, for she hasn't shared a memorable interaction with an Animal in years. Not since her youth, when she was tutored by a crusty Rhinoceros with a singular distaste for her penmanship – and, of course, there was the midwife who turned her world upside down. She says, "And what do you think?"

"Me?" Elphaba looks surprised by the inquiry. "Well, I think…why do they have to be one of two options? Why can't they just be?" Her eyes are briefly drawn to the window, then she says, "I asked my father to read it. I thought it would strike a chord with him too."

Melena quirks an eyebrow. "And did he?"

"I don't think so." Elphaba drops her concentration from the window to the floor, her heel scuffing the panels. "He took it, but I'm sure he was just humouring me. Every time I try to make my case, he shuts me down. 'We'll speak later,' he says, and then nothing comes of it."

"What case?"

Elphaba shakes her head slightly, as if to imply that it is beyond the scope of what she is willing – or permitted – to share.

"He must be under tremendous stress," Melena says offhandedly, "but he seems to be faring well. These are trying times, after all."

Disdain rolls off of Elphaba in waves. "That's what everyone tells me," she says. "Has there been a period of history that _wasn't_ trying?" Melena readies her lips to spout more platitudes, but Elphaba adds, "I didn't mean to snap at you – I just – well, any perspective would be appreciated."

Melena hears this and the words stick in her throat. She studies Elphaba and says, "He's hiding something from you."

"I thought so." Elphaba's eyes descend to the floor again. "I used to sit with him as he was working through his correspondences. I would draw or read or just mill around the study, but he'd always stop me and pull me into his lap and explain what he was doing. 'This is just for show,' he'd say, 'but show is everything.' Or: 'Remain cryptic and they won't know what to expect.' Sometimes he'd even have me sign my name below his." The spark of a smile; it doesn't catch. She looks up, puzzled and pained and – from where Melena is sitting – so very small. "I can't be the only one who thinks it absurd that a five year old could scrawl across the documents, but a nineteen year old is restricted from seeing the envelopes."

This time, Melena formulates her words before she relays them. She says, slowly, "Maybe it's not the content so much as the fact that he's keeping it from you. Maybe he's ashamed of the secret itself."

"Why would that be?"

"I can't say for certain, but the situation reminds me of something I was recently told – and that I am inclined to believe."

"Which is?"

"That men have disastrously fragile egos."

They have better luck with this match; the spark ignites. Elphaba's frown twitches upwards in recognition and then it is a smile. "The person who told you that must be very wise," she says.

"Well, she's not twenty-two, or pregnant, or me for that matter, so the odds are in her favour."

Elphaba stares.

The air tightens. Melena is pierced with shame. It was the wrong thing to say – too pathetic, too pitying, too personal – and it has left her open to a pang of loss, which she swiftly smothers in false laughter. She says, "That was a foolish thing to spring on you."

"No, it's just…you shouldn't feel that way." All at once, Elphaba straightens, shaking her surprise for solemnity. "I think you're—"

"Elphaba!"

At the sound of Nessa's call, Elphaba's eyes go wide and the embarrassment catches up and encloses her, for she flushes and clamps her mouth shut. She flips her book closed and scampers to the door, hesitating and then nodding awkwardly at Melena before launching herself from the room.

The two girls disappear into town all afternoon, only turning up for a brief meal before retreating to the terrace to take in the sunset. Nessa chatters about the dress she bought in town – it is perfect, _just perfect_ , to wear to the Ozdust – and Melena feigns interest without letting on to her concerns about Elphaba, who pokes at her potatoes and gives no indication of their earlier conversation. This leaves Melena in a state of flustered apprehension, believing that she's failed somehow; squandered her chance. But when she turns in for the night, she finds the public library's edition of _There's No Place Called Home_ by Reginalf Pantherin on her pillow.

It is a slog, far beyond Melena's understanding, at times reading like a different language, but she perseveres well into the early hours of the morning and finishes it in two days. On the third, she tracks Elphaba to the library and they discuss. She asks for clarification, Elphaba elucidates eagerly, and that evening Melena is met with another book on her pillow, and another within a few days of that, and another, and another.

When Elphaba and Nessa depart for Shiz, Frex and Melena see them to the station. Nessa blows kisses through the shining pane of the window and Elphaba raises an uncertain palm in farewell. She looks uncomfortable but grateful.

 _My girls_ , Melena thinks, surprising herself.


	7. Wicked

**7\. Wicked**

Melena knows nothing if not the value of silence.

She's been what guests call a _private person_ for nearly eighteen years now, guarding her happiness close, her unhappiness closer, and rarely volunteering glimpses into her inner life. It's a development that would appall teenage Melena, who loathed anything resembling meekness, but the Melena with twice as much pretense under her belt cannot expect herself to throw open the doors and usher strangers inside – not when she lacks the energy to so much as lift the key. Conversation is tolling, confrontation is easily prevented, and so she's trained herself to nod, to acquiesce, to ensure that her thoughts remain thoughts and to bear her problems alone.

This entails a good deal of fortitude, more than she gives herself credit for, but also a good deal of distracted blundering when something is wrong.

And something is wrong.

It is not the solitary dread of bleeding two weeks late, of having a reminder of her precarious position handed to her by a tiny ball of cells that may or may not exist (and thankfully does not in the end). It is not a visit from her father as he ambles his way to the hot springs at Mount Runcible, when he stays on an extra week to criticize her until she feels smaller than that tiny ball of cells that does not exist. Nor is it the piercing glares from Frex when she falls mysteriously ill before dinner with the Ixian minister who refers to Elphaba as _the Wizard's laughable excuse for an heir_ or her enduring feud with the new gardener or a stain on her favourite gown.

This is a wrong that is outside of herself, beyond her control, beyond the tempering powers of time and patience, because it has been over three weeks since Nessa last wrote.

Initially, Melena blames it on the post, for the service has always been of dubious quality. It contends with inclement weather, with distance, with out-and-out incompetence, so she supposes it's really a wonder that the letters reach Colwen Grounds at all. But this does not make it any less grating when four of them are tipped into her lap after a week of anxious forbearance – or perhaps a week and a half, possibly two. She struggles to calculate the longest period of time that lapsed without an update from Nessa, but it certainly did not stretch into this range, and Melena cannot evade her fears as the walls close in a little more each day.

She will not consult Frex. Not yet.

Instead, she continues writing, each outgoing letter a little more frantic. She attaches extra stamps, though she knows that is not the issue, and ventures into town to submit them in person. When the porter presents the daily pile of envelopes on a silver tray, she stares intently while Frex surveys each one, waiting for him to make some passing comment on Nessa's absent voice, but he merely grunts a few curses because _bloody Bfee is running Appleton into the ground_ and motions for her to pass the butter.

Melena does not want to push. She is aware of the pressures that are slowly crushing the life out of him from all sides; she discerns it in the lines on his face, the frustration in his voice, and even feels it herself as a sort of pall that sits over the roof, but addressing it would only make things worse. A severe winter has delayed the few crops that it didn't damage. A drought in the Vinkus is preventing supplementation of the dwindling food stores. Trade with Gillikin is at a standstill. There's news of some Animal-run terrorist group, the crimes it has spawned in the last few months, and the fallout that is brutal and occasionally bloody: the bans, the arrests, the experiments. Frex has no desire to condone the Wizard's restrictions against Animal citizens, but there are spies on his council and no telling who – Melena often listens at the doors of his private meetings – and not complying could prove dire, what with the Yellow Brick Road linking the doors of that gaudy green palace to theirs and Nessa so far from home.

All of this, however, does not explain why Frex is curbing guests when they veer towards certain subjects, why he receives his newspapers in his study, why the man who at one time could not endure separation from Nessa for three days is blindly tolerant of the delay. Melena assesses this behaviour and cannot help the suspicions that creep into her thoughts like ivy, weaving through their every interaction until she finds him insufferable for the first time in years. She reads the highs and lows of his silences, the sneers, the avoidance, and she knows that the anger simmering beneath the surface of it all is telling him that to deprive her of answers is to deprive her of dignity.

This proves a successful technique. Melena, chagrined by his ability to worm under her skin after all this time, is driven further into her own reticence by her determination to prove him wrong.

Arming herself with Nessa's last five letters, she plants herself in the parlour, at her desk, and splays them across the surface. She hunches over the loose sheets for hours, reading the lines and the spaces between, marvelling at how isolated a mere signature can make her feel when the person behind the pen that inked it is so far away, and then analyzing what is available.

There is nothing to indicate that Nessa is upset with her (even so, she has a history of flaunting her affection for Frex in such scenarios) and nothing to foreshadow Nessa coming to any harm. The first is perhaps the least relevant, documenting her war with a particularly grueling assignment – _a 1% penalty is practically an invitation to hand it in late anyway_ – and the two that follow extol Boq's virtues until Melena is queasy enough to consider abandoning her task.

The fourth is a little more troubling: it describes an outburst during history class, one that Melena judged typical of Elphaba at the time of her first reading, but which hollows her out as she tackles it again. Only Elphaba's name is brought in; Nessa neglects to mention which history professor was arrested, but Melena knows in her bones that it was Doctor Dillamond.

The last letter coincides with the day that Elphaba left for the Emerald City, for Nessa explains that she intends to post it after accompanying Elphaba and Galinda to the station. It worries Nessa some, the prospect of Elphaba's absence, but she is confident that she'll be able to manage until they return – with Boq's help, of course. And then she writes:

 _I'm still not sure what Elphaba is hoping to accomplish_.

This is the point at which Melena walks away. Something in her chest wrings, but she breathes deeply, convincing herself to stand firm while the world slowly tilts beneath her feet. Her ears get keener and her steps quieter, fuelled by the nagging prospects that flock into the gaps in the narrative, each building on the most alarming aspects of its predecessor.

"I hear that letters from Shiz are being heavily censored," one voice says. "Perhaps your daughter wrote something of a sensitive nature." Melena rests her temple against the door, thinking. "Distance is what I prescribe. Distance and caution."

After this exchange, Frex invites more of his colleagues, appealing to them for ideas, but the miracle he is waiting for proves elusive and the discussions end up breeding more problems than they solve. They speak of famine, of unrest among the Quadlings, of an Animal Resistance that is either strengthening or quashed into submission depending on the man behind the rumour. They speak, Melena realizes, of the types of calamities that have bookended each regime, toppling one and ushering in the next.

Elphaba taught her this in one of their discussions this past summer.

Melena thinks of her often, inventing different versions of the trip to the Emerald City without a shred of evidence to ground them on. She begins to associate it with Nessa's silence. The two are correlated, she knows, and she is proven right when a deluge of letters arrives, though they oblige her fears to congregate around the conditions at Shiz once again. Nessa's letters are heavily modified; whole lines blacked out until they are beyond understanding. One of them is torn away completely mid-page. Another is bent diagonally. Melena runs the pad of her finger over the blocks of nothing, as if to absorb her daughter's distorted words, but she is limited to the one line she can make out: _Glinda won't tell us what happened in the Emerald City._

"Glinda?" Melena mutters, followed by: "What happened in the Emerald City?"

Frex glances up from the letter that he is trying to decipher, their eyes meeting across the table, and Melena feels a sickening pull in her gut as it occurs to her that he knows exactly what happened. She does not bother asking, for it will be futile, it is always futile, especially when he is so uncontrollably livid over the way that Nessa's letters have been handled. He wastes no time in writing to Madame Morrible, only to find that she has been promoted to an advising position with the Wizard, and her replacement is either powerless, incompetent or a potent combination of the two.

Everyone, it seems, is a potent combination of the two, and the Thropps' mutual desperation fosters a brief reconnection. They scramble into action, verging on an expedition to Gillikin, but their plans are brought to a screeching halt when Nessa sends Melena a small gift-box with a tag that reads: _The pair of gloves you had your eye on._

Melena is bewildered, but she pulls the soft leather over her fingers and feels paper crunch against her palm. Nearly tearing it in the process, she unravels the letter and thinks herself about to drop as her eyes devour the fresh signature, the words that have been messily strung together in haste, the new questions they rip open. Nessa restates her frustration with Glinda's partial renditions of the story and mentions that they are taken into frequent interrogations: alone, together, drilled over and over, each detail picked apart until it doesn't feel like anything that's happened in her lifetime.

 _We've had no word from Elphaba_ , she writes. _I can't stand it here._ _Please let me come home._

Melena does not know which half strikes with greater force, only that it picks her battle and spurs her headlong through the front that she has cultivated so carefully, right to Frex's study, where he is labouring over a report. He glances up with annoyance, as if she is no more than a fly that's gotten in through the window, and she quails in her shoes, but presses on.

"Why is Nessa being questioned?" she says angrily. "Why are the letters being censored?" He leaves her in desperate suspension and her vehemence only builds, so she says, "Nessa is coming home."

"Nessa will stay in school and finish her degree," he says flatly, "and our lives will go on uninterrupted." He taps his papers into an orderly pile and merges them into another set of documents.

"Have you no concern for your daughter? She's begging."

He slides his glasses up his nose and meets her eyes briefly. "I have every concern for Nessa. We've had word from her. She's safe—"

"Hardly," Melena scoffs. "They spring interrogations on her without a moment's notice. Suppose she says the wrong thing and ends up detained – what then?"

The portrait is abstract – shapes and shadows – but painted with just enough clarity to strike a nerve. His lips purse, closing on words, and he scowls before he turns away. "If I recall correctly, _you_ were the one who advocated for Nessa to go to Shiz in the first place."

"A decision I don't regret," Melena says. "Her first year there was the happiest of her life."

"And how does the current year rank?"

"Only because she doesn't feel comfortable without Elphaba. If we can bring her home until this is sorted out and Elphaba is back at school…"

Frex studies her through a lens of weariness, as if she is boring him. "You did well by Nessa for a time," he says, "and better than I expected at that, but you will no longer be party to any of the decisions regarding her schooling or her future."

"Elphaba was her closest friend," Melena says.

"Her sister, you mean," he says, and Melena's breath catches in her throat. It's been an unspoken secret all these years, and one that she's considered only herself privy to. Hearing him render it so clinically makes blood swish hot and loud in her ears.

She curls her lip. "That is none of your—"

"You're too sentimental for your own good, Melena," he says. "It's gotten tiresome."

Melena's eyes widen and she makes no reply, because she is shocked by the allegation and even more so by the voice in the back of her mind that goes _perhaps he's right_. But no, he's not, because she has fucked her way through his most elite circles and hasn't given a second thought to any of them, because she doesn't lament the fact that she can't remember her mother's face, because she's never bought into that old romance of family: the so-called sanctity of marriage, of parenthood, of home. Whatever it is that drives her, whatever she was feeling on the platform as the train sped away with Elphaba and Nessa aboard, it's more complicated than sentimentality and she hates him for belittling it so.

"Nessarose will stay in school and make suitable friends," Frex says, "and that is my final decision. There will be no more entertaining your whims."

"My _whims_?" Melena says incredulously, still reeling. "You exiled one of my daughters and crippled the other. Where did my whims enter into that?"

Her muscles go taut. She does not dare lift a finger, because she has just expelled twenty years of closeted blame like a breath that has been festering in her lungs and she is paralyzed with the terror and the exhilaration of it.

For the first time in a long, long while, she feels like herself.

But then Frex rises and that freedom blurs and bursts. She thinks he might strike her, or is at least considering it; the taste on her tongue is of milkflowers. His voice is low and menacing, but filtered as if through reason. He says, "I permitted you to have _her_ here, to satisfy your quaint reunion fantasies. Against my instincts, I permitted it. I watched you cast aside all regard for our daughter—" Melena quivers with rage, "—to pander to…to what? An obnoxious, ill-born _freak_ who had no business under this roof. And now we're inextricably associated with—"

"With what? Associated with what?"

Frex shrinks before her eyes. He is inscrutable again; the taste of milkflowers dissolves into nothing. He aligns the pens on his desk and says, "We will discuss this in the morning."

"I am not a child to be sent to bed with empty promises," she says furiously.

He brushes by her like a gust of air and turns out the lamp. "Then don't behave like a child," he says, "and see to it that Nessa has her reply promptly."

"There must be faster ways to suffocate me," Melena calls after him, but it is futile, it is always futile, and she is not at all surprised when she wakes to the news that the governor will be out on an errand until late in the evening.

Melena foregoes breakfast and immediately sets out penning her response to Nessa, for she can't bear the thought of food any more than she can bear the thought of Nessa swathing herself in layer upon layer of false hope. She packages the disheartening tidings in the form of a belated birthday present – a cheap pair of woolen stockings from the nearest shop. The card enclosed is irreproachable; the letter stuffed into the toe less so. Melena informs Nessa that her father thinks it best that she stay at Shiz for the time being, but that he is slowly being worked over and they intend to spare her another semester on her own. _Hold on, my love_ , she writes, predicting the way the words will ring emptily through Nessa's head as she reconciles herself to more afternoons in the company of an unresponsive Glinda and Boq of the dubious intentions.

This expectation quickly morphs into reality. Nessa takes the non-answer as a definite negative and refuses to ship them any more contraband information. She posts bland letters about the clemency of the weather and the dullness of her readings and then she begins dangling idle threats about remaining at Shiz over the holidays. _I might as well if I'm to live in these conditions interminably_ , she writes, and Melena rolls her eyes, even as guilt churns in her stomach. She persists on her side, trying to coax Nessa out of her sulky silence, but Nessa remains intent on punishing them, and Melena must make do with what she has, unearthing the first plea from the mound of letters in her desk and working to rearrange it into some kind of revelation.

 _We've had no word from Elphaba_ , she reads. _Boq suspects she never left the EC – he's been such a pillar of strength. Still, I can't believe she would do this. She said to us, "You've been like family to me." And now she's abandoned us for a few Animals she doesn't even know. I can't stand it here. Please let me come home._

Melena reads it upwards of twelve times. She dwells on each sentence individually, narrowing her eyes and varying her position in the manor, as if a physical change will yield a mental one, but she comes up with nothing. It is there, the answer that she is seeking; it lurks just out of sight but it is there, she knows this, and so she crawls into bed with the words gnawing at her like a tired jaw.

It falls into place at dawn.

 _Abandoned us for a few Animals she doesn't even know._

The sky is bruised purple by the imminent sunrise and Melena flies out of her room, down the stairs, to Frex's study. She topples the chair, flinging back the documents on the desk and wrenching open drawers until she comes across the newspapers that he has been storing.

She draws the pile nearer, sending the issues soaring into the air and onto the floor – a cascade of accumulating days – as she holds her breath and rummages for the articles that lie beneath those she's seen.

 _Arrest of controversial thinker Reginalf Pantherin. Reforms reach Shiz University; "I shall continue speaking out!" cries conspirator. Violence in Ozma Memorial Park linked to Animal terrorism. Loyal servants of the Wizard mutilated in cold blood._

Melena comes to the last sheaf and her heart stalls. She takes the paper into her hands, squinting through the dim morning light and then dropping it onto the desk, as if it scalds her fingers. Before she reads the headline, she absorbs the dated snapshot below it: a young girl, shy but rapt, at the age of fifteen. Two haunted eyes stare within. Dark eyes. Her eyes.

Elphaba's eyes.

 _Beware the Wicked Witch of the West._


	8. Blizzard II

**A/N:** This chapter was originally meant to be a sort of sub-section of the next one, but I got a little carried away…by _ahem_ about 3000 words…

The thing is, I never actually considered "she's been stripping the Munchkins of our rights" to be more than a throwaway line, because there's so much going on emotionally in Wicked Witch of the East, but writing from the perspective of a Munchkin (and Nessa's mommy, no less) forced me to analyze what Nessa endured during intermission and what Munchkinland endured as a consequence – and I ended up finding the details really, really interesting. Hopefully you feel the same!

* * *

 **8\. Blizzard**

The first few months are the hardest.

Leaves shrivel and drop and Melena's poise ebbs with the heat, dissipating as she struggles to reckon with the reality of the Wicked Witch of the West on her own – and with winter setting in, no less. _South_ , she tells herself, _she's gone south_ , but she is fraught with visions of Elphaba in the thick of it, in the Emerald City and Gillikin, where the Wizard's goons are conducting the brunt of the brutality and Animals are being displaced in droves.

She can concentrate on little else, but cannot let on to her distraction, not with Frex alive and sainted in his own eyes for sparing Nessa the taint of collusion. Somewhere between coming upon Melena on the floor of his demolished study and pulling her to her feet, saying, "There's no need to concern yourself with that any longer," in a way that was quasi-soothing, quasi-threatening, he resolved upon his crusade to wipe Colwen Grounds of Elphaba's lingering presence. He counters every allusion to the friendship that was on full display the previous summer – _yes, my daughter is quite close with Glinda the Good_ , he replies tersely – and goes deaf to any further insinuations, channelling the whole of his spite into severing the few ties that still hang, limp and fraying, between the girls.

Melena is evidently one of these ties, for he goes as far as withholding Nessa's infrequent updates, receiving all letters in his study and massively underestimating the force of her desperation. She is not a fortnight in circumventing this measure.

The cook is enlisted in her scheme, for he has served at Colwen Grounds even longer than she and knows the way of things. He knows Frex, he knows Nessa, he knows them at the dinner table and behind closed doors, and has a special sympathy for Melena on account of it. Consequently, he doesn't hazard a second thought when she entreats him to place a subscription to the _Munchkin Mirror_ in his name and convey the daily issues to her privately. Her husband has been refusing her access to her daughter's letters, you see, and she is all but mad with worry.

(She is not being entirely dishonest.)

At any rate, he deposits the sheaves in the second drawer of her writing desk, where she greets them with trepidation, then a tiny shot of relief, then more trepidation. It is not enough, she finds, to know that Elphaba is alive, because all she accomplishes with her ploy is to enter a new phase of destitution. She has information; now it is a matter of extracting truth – a hell of a task when her only source is a column called "Witch Watch," a recent staple of the _Mirror_ , which documents sightings of Elphaba both locally and abroad.

Melena swallows the headlines with a grain of salt. The blurred figures undulating amongst the clouds are birds. The green face floating in every crowd is a trick of the mind, she knows this, and likewise she knows that it would take a spectacular miscalculation for Elphaba to land herself in "Witch Watch." But she archives the clips anyway, as if she will make sense of them later; fit the pieces just so and discern the clues that Elphaba is leaving by omission. She seizes anything that is something. Anything that isn't _whereabouts unknown_.

Because the shadows and the tricks are inventions; _whereabouts unknown_ is real. It means that Elphaba is unaware that there is a special regiment of the Gale Force trained to track her over every terrain. She does not know which areas are patrolled the heaviest. Where the traps are laid. The rumours that spread like disease; the hate that catches like fire. That Oz, all of Oz, the people who once exalted her as the daughter of a deity, are happily demonizing her name, constructing an entire history from wild scraps of fiction until there can be no doubt in anyone's mind that Elphaba was a bad seed waiting to take root.

She is vicious. She is feral. She is terrifying.

 _She is freezing_ , Melena thinks. _She is starving. She is terrified._

And yet, underneath the distress, Melena can barely skim the tendril of pride that keeps her hoping – pride in Elphaba for holding her own, and in herself for seeing the shadows behind the curtain. The masses snag on the headlines, dazzled by Glinda the Good, shocked by stories of rabid Animals, and they never think to tear past and trudge on. Melena, however, learns to string the first page to the last, gathering the fractured version into her hands and recovering the story scattered throughout the fine print. The results are alarming.

Gillikin borrows extensively from the Wizard and lives in the shadow of a city a twelfth of its size. The King of the Vinkus accedes his hold on the land, along with his son, and remains royalty only in name. Quadling Country is subdued – not without carnage. The campaign against Animals is at its height and the Wizard's power is absolute, but for one hurdle. Melena can practically hear Elphaba in her head: _The next logical move is against Munchkinland._

Frex does not take this well, but he does not make it obvious, not until their usual cadre of guests begins declining his invitations, retreating into their homes to wait out the threats that stride a few golden bricks closer each day. _These are trying times_ , they write in their replies, which are shown to Melena, as if she has personally incited the drought and the deficits and the unrest.

Melena clamps down on her tongue and does not gratify him with a response. She wants to, but she does not, and Frex begins emerging from his fortress of denial in spurts, deliberately dropping newspapers where convenience will tempt her into a peripheral glance. It is petty, but not dastardly. That is, until she comes across a special edition of the _Emerald Times_ on the armrest of her favourite chair in the library. Its headline advertises an interview with the Wizard of Oz – the first in years – and the dread that gnaws through her insides is not enough to dissuade her from rifling to the third page.

… _the words of our noble Wizard_ , it reads, _who bears the tragedy of his daughter's sedition with poise, vowing that he will do right by Oz no matter the cost, but admitting with a sigh that the father in him hopes to see his daughter rehabilitated and returned to society._

Melena has to remind herself to breathe.

 _Words are only words_ , she thinks, and these are probably not even his, but _the tragedy of his daughter's sedition_ , but _do right by Oz_ , but _the father in him_. _The father in him._ Does _the father in him_ do his penance in the form of sleepless nights? Is _the father in him_ tormented by the uncertainty? Does _the_ _father in him_ see a daughter or a distraction in these headlines?

She does not want to know.

(But she does.)

It does not leave her, that interview. She cannot keep her hands still, they tremble so violently, and she feels the anger and the guilt and the desperation so acutely that it overtakes her rationality. She thinks, wrongly, that Frex will see her misery and react, that as she sits with him that night and watches him pore over a different paper, hmming and harrumphing, she can appeal to a generosity that isn't there.

"Anything of interest?" she asks.

He peers at her from behind his glasses and makes a noise in his throat that musters all the eloquence of a shrug.

Melena fidgets. She digs her nails into her palm. She runs her gaze around the perimeter of the room and swallows and finally says, "Perhaps I could see it when you're done?"

"Of course."

And then he rises, bidding her goodnight, and flings it into the fire. Three days later he has his first stroke.

It is stress, Melena supposes, and age, for he is an old man. She doesn't see it until he is supine on the mattress, pounds of useless flesh with a face that is waxy and pale as the sheets, the veins in his hands swollen, eyes screwed up and sealed against the pain. Melena stands over his paralyzed form and fights the feeling that an entire chunk of her history is corroding, and she resents the pity that pierces her heart when his eyelids lift and unveil the naked fear behind them. The outlook is grim, the doctor tells her, and by the second stroke it is clear that he will not be leaving his bed again.

The weeks feel longer than they are as Melena tends to him, contriving excuses to linger by his side, to get him alone during his periods of lucid nostalgia, waiting for an apology, for a sign of remorse, for something. But he holds out with such obstinacy that her compassion wears to dust and she begins to imagine what life will be like without the pillar of disapproval towering over her, without the words _carelessness_ and _indiscretion_ ledged against her like crimes.

He will die, she reflects, studying the star-speckled night sky that lies beyond her window. He will die and she will don her grieving clothes and play the distraught wife for a time, but she will explain everything to Nessa. She will explain everything and bring Elphaba home and feel the sun on her skin for the first time in ages.

It does not happen this way.

The foundation gives and the pillar crumbles and before Melena can blink she is buried in the wreckage, provoking a landslide every time she dares to shift a pebble. She is rid of a tyrant, yes, but her daughter has lost a father, and the loss strikes Nessa so grievously that it is still Melena's to shoulder.

Frex believed that to keep Nessa ignorant was to keep her a child and to keep her a child was to keep her safe, so he requested that she not be told of his deteriorating condition until it was necessary. Melena complied, if only out of respect for the dying, and didn't contact Nessa until the second stroke, which she portrayed as the first. By the time the letter reached Gillikin, Frex was dead and the vultures circling. Nessa was none-the-wiser.

Melena can't regret this more when she arrives at Shiz University and is told that the governor is in a private audience with the Wizard's Press Secretary. The latter title does not bear a face in her memory, so she is doubly surprised when she shoves past the guards and beholds a crestfallen Nessa in the clutches of Madame Morrible. Nessa is not crying, but her face is pale and sunken, and Melena feels ice slide through her veins.

Morrible swivels towards the door, which rebounds dully off the wall. "Ah, a visitor," she says cheerfully. Over her shoulder, Nessa's eyes send Melena a frantic plea.

"Condolences, my dear lady, sincerest condolences," Morrible says, rising and enfolding Melena's hand in her cold, iron grip. "I was merely offering my expertise to our new governor in these trying times." _What period of history wasn't trying?_ "It seems I was the first to do so."

"How thoughtful of you," Melena says tightly.

Morrible draws her aside with an intangible force that seems to shift the very tiles beneath their feet. The old woman's face looms inches away, long and pallid, and she pares her voice to a murmur. "I always considered your daughter to be one of my best pupils. She's clever, yes, and capable, but such power is so daunting for one so young." She pats Melena's captive wrist. "Fortunately, the Wizard has offered to put a representative on her council, if she so wishes – to ease her into her office."

Melena can hardly loosen her jaw for the indignation. She chokes out, "Nessarose wishes no such thing."

"Is that so?"

"Her father has provided her with ample preparation," Melena says, wrenching herself free. "She will do well on her own."

A lie, and they both know it. Morrible's black eyes rake Melena's face, narrowing, and Melena is suddenly alert to every feature there that has manifested in Elphaba. Submitting to the scrutiny crawls over her body like a betrayal.

Morrible's stiff skin cracks into a knowing smile. "I do hope that's true – for Munchkinland's sake."

"Your patronizing is not appreciated."

"Oh?" Morrible turns. "My dear girl, you mistake our intentions. We're simply looking to do right by Oz."

 _Do right by Oz._ "I am not your dear girl." _The father in him._ "I was married to the governor for twenty-two years. The games you play are no mystery to me. You will not have purchase in Munchkinland while Nessarose governs."

Morrible pauses, and then that sneer splits and she says, "And how long will that be?" Sidestepping Melena, she takes her leave, voice restored to its patent theatricality. "Farewell, my girls, and brace yourselves for the months to come. History is _begging_ to be written."

The door has not bumped into its socket before Melena collides with Nessa, whose brave face is slipping, and holds her as it crumples completely. She smooths Nessa's hair and clasps her hands, as if Morrible doesn't exist, as if no one exists but them, a population of two, and all the while she cannot wipe the image of Morrible's terrible grin from her mind's eye.

"I wish I could run," is all Nessa will say of the interaction. Melena does not prod the wound; she understands – she wonders and she worries, but she understands.

The past year seized Nessa by the hair and dragged her through her worst nightmare. She was abandoned by Elphaba – or at least interpreted it that way – and by Glinda, who procured her degree early and paid no mind to her shadow. Her parents consigned her to Shiz despite Melena's promised intercession. The interrogations did not cease. Her classmates actively fled her vicinity. The world, it seemed, forgot about her, and when she was finally revived by the prospect of home, it was with the burden of the state on her back and a marked distrust for everyone who wasn't Boq.

Melena does not realize this at first, for she is the one who Nessa clings to. She installs Nessa under all the blankets she can find and talks and talks and talks in a voice so low it is almost a croon, then relinquishes herself to a somnolent daze, with Nessa beside her and snow swirling outside the window and thoughts of a baby no longer than her forearm. She feels strangely content, but she wakes with an empty embrace and finds Nessa breakfasting with Boq, who is casting dejected looks at the door and smearing oats across his plate. He accompanies them home.

Nessa does well. Initially.

Frex is interred; an induction dinner follows within the month and Nessa presides at the head of the table, gripping Melena's hand with enough force to carve angry red crescents into the skin. She smiles when cued and laughs at the inane jokes of the various mayors and ministers who drop in to offer condolences and commiseration, but Melena sees how the charm that one circulated through her as naturally as oxygen now leaves her in a state of total depletion. But for the red slippers that she was given on her sixteenth birthday, Nessa continues to dress sombrely, and Melena suspects that it is not the loss of her father – though a terrible blow – that saps her strength before she can think of putting it to use.

Melena, for her part, does what she can to keep her daughter upright. She ensures that Nessa has sufficient time to sleep off the weight of each day and takes breakfast to her late in the morning. She sorts the missives based on urgency and arranges the appointments so that the schedule is never too tolling. Before meetings, she brushes out Nessa's hair and gives her scathing accounts of the politicians she is set to be dealing with: their tics, their motives, their open secrets and closed deals. ("Father told you that?" Nessa asks. After this, Melena filters her gossip with greater discretion.)

Most importantly, however, Melena cautions Nessa against drastic action. "People don't cope well with change," she says, "and Munchkins especially."

Nessa does not listen.

When Boq clears his throat and declares his intention of returning to Shiz to finish his education, Nessa goes white. Her eyes dart up at him and she sits down with her council the next day. Within the week, the trains stop running and every person attempting to cross the border is vetted and, more likely than not, denied. The reason given: to protect against the threat of the Wicked Witch of the West, against Animal terrorists looking to base themselves in Munchkinland with inside help. Not long after that Boq applies for his papers and the borders close altogether.

There is talk of savage beatings. Animals taking their chances anyway. Tradesmen smuggling themselves into Gillikin to maintain their livelihoods and support their families. Munchkinland is frozen; its people baffled and fearful, eating through their preserves and praying for reprieve though the sun beats down on the fields in full force. Melena, in response, does the unthinkable – she thinks: _if only Frex were here._

Lax as he was with Nessa, he had a way of wrangling her into reason that Melena never mastered. She can only meet impatience with impatience and the result is the screech of wheels and a slammed door, if Nessa is feeling charitable, or else days of crackling silence. Nessa begins to take her meals alone and speaks little of her plans, but every time her lackeys convene the borders wrap a little tighter around her citizens. Around Boq. Around Melena. Against Elphaba.

 _I'm losing her_ , Melena thinks of her daughter, the little girl whose smile could have powered a whole city. Now commonly referred to as the Wicked Witch of the East. (And Melena has a sickening hunch that the title was coined within their household.)

Melena is fraught, mulling the worst and sleepless for it, witnessing the escalating reforms and thinking of Elphaba on the run, always of Elphaba on the run, and resenting the council for yielding before Nessa's persuasion. She collects her newspapers – often delayed due to interceptions along the routes – and reluctantly concedes that stitching up the rift will not be without its seams. Not when encouraging Nessa will strand Elphaba. Not when sheltering Elphaba will condemn Nessa. Not when Nessa is cloistered behind walls too thick to puncture and too high to scale and Elphaba is nowhere to be found.

So Melena waits.

For a sign. For advice. For a hand to find hers and squeeze.

She does not know precisely what it is that she is anticipating, only that she waits and she worries and she watches the clouds gather, disperse, and gather again, preparing to spill innumerable flakes onto the heads of desperate wanderers. One of these heads will belong to Elphaba, trudging through her third winter at large, roaming silent streets with snow stinging her face and shivers wracking her body and footprints broadcasting her trajectory like so many informants. Melena surrenders before this vision as it clarifies – there is nothing else for her to do. She is desolate. Biding time. Fearing always the day when she will have to look back on this period of her life and remember that the last few months were the hardest.

Hypothermia. Pneumonia. Starvation. Frostbite. The impotency of a broom against the unbridled might of a blizzard.

It is less than a week before Melena barrels through her breaking point and refuses to wait any longer.


	9. Care

**9\. Care**

"I don't," Nessa said.

"Your father would receive monthly—"

"My father was on better terms with the Wizard," Nessa interjected. "Maybe he did receive monthly reports on her whereabouts, but I don't. Now, if you're quite finished wasting my time…"

This was Melena's first attempt at lobbying for Elphaba's sake, not three weeks ago, and since then there has been no improvement on either side of the desk. Nessa, as ever, is obstinate and unamenable and Melena's arguments lose their thrust as soon as she launches them against the stone foundations. It is not long before the cracks begin to show through her veneer of careful deference, but she persists until her arms are sore from the effort and her hands bloody from the shards. Elphaba is a menace to society, they say, she is a witch, she is a traitor, she is in Ovvels, in Traum, in the Vinkun Grasslands, everywhere at once and nowhere to be seen. Melena knows when she incorporates these scant bits of information into the scripts for these sessions that she will be shouting the words at closed shutters.

Each day grows a little darker, a little bleaker, and so much lonelier, but it all becomes irrelevant when she visits the study to supplicate for the fourth time and there is a dull thump in the wardrobe behind Nessa. The doors swing open and Elphaba steps into the room, gaunt and cagey and weary, but alive, thankfully alive, and warm if only temporarily, and for the briefest moment Melena is impervious to the fears that have accumulated across her heart like open sores.

Below the absurdly wide brim of an entirely absurd hat, Elphaba's shrewd eyes dart about the room. She gleans the terms of her reception from their faces, finding more than she bargained for in Melena's presence, but the surprise that twitches over her lips is not disapproving. Melena is certain that it is the beginning of a smile.

It promptly fades when Elphaba registers the dismay that has robbed Nessa of all colour. "Nessa—"

"I will not hear it."

"I'm so sorry, Nessa."

Nessa shakes her head fervently, training her eyes into her lap. The apology has a convincing ring, but the three of them know – and Nessa most of all – that Elphaba has not had the luxury of reflecting on her actions with anything reminiscent of depth. She can't afford to. There is the weight of thousands of lives balancing on her shoulders and Nessa, who is so heavy for all her slightness, could very well be her undoing.

Elphaba says, "I need your support—"

"As if you deserve it!" Nessa cries.

"The reforms are driving Animals out of their homes, out of their jobs, out of Oz as a whole – if they can make it that far. And, Nessa, they can't. They're ending up in cages and in prison." Elphaba's eyes are round and keen, imploring, but Nessa meets her with all the liveliness of a statue. "We've been—"

"We?" Nessa scoffs.

"Yes, _we_ , have been setting up outposts in the Vinkus to shelter them for the time being, but there are no resources in the grasslands or the mountains. We need the support of Munchkinland. We need your support." Elphaba drives her teeth into her bottom lip and peers at Nessa once more, as if into a blinding light. "You do understand that I had to leave, don't you? I know I was absent when you needed me, Nessa, and I know about the burden of association—"

Nessa has been smarting all along, but this causes her to recoil and wind up again, as if she has been slapped and feels herself capable of the same. Her sardonic laughter has the same effect on Elphaba's candour as a razor does on skin. "Burden of association?" she echoes. "That's an awfully clean way of putting it."

"I'm not here to excuse what you've gone through on my account," Elphaba says valiantly.

"You have no idea what I've gone through on your account!" Nessa says, making no effort to govern her fury. "You don't claim that someone is your family, Elphaba, and then spin on your heel and leave. You don't turn your back on family – and then turn back to beg for support."

Elphaba suffers the blow in silence, as though she has not been made a pariah by her own father.

"You'd be on your knees if you had any idea what we endured after you left," Nessa says. "They were interrogating people you'd never even spoken to. How do you think they treated your friends? We were under surveillance – for _months_. They opened our letters before we even knew we'd gotten any. They pulled us out of class to question us, one by one, so we couldn't plan what to say as a group. No one talked to us in all that time, Elphaba, and then Glinda and Fiyero were invited to the Emerald City, and where do you think that left Boq and I?"

This is the most that Nessa has ever recounted of her last months at Shiz and Melena is stunned by its sting. _It's over now_ , she thinks, but the guilt scorches just the same. If she brought Nessa home – Frex be damned – then Nessa would not have suffered the fear and the scorn heaped on her in Elphaba's absence, then she would not be using it as ammunition against her sister. It is so surreal. They lash out like wounded animals, digging into their own wounds without thinking, and it is the first time that Melena has ever really seen them as each other's family.

Even so, her intervention is feeble. She only manages to say, "Let her explain, Nessa."

"Why? Don't you see what she's done to us?" Nessa's lips curve into a sneer as she faces Elphaba again. "My father died, did you know that? As if that hasn't been enough stress, my mother's been worrying about you. She barges into my study three times a day to harass me about contributing to your cause."

All of Melena's meetings with Nessa are booked in advance. She submits herself into the list of appointments that is now compiled by Boq and receives a slip of confirmation at breakfast the next morning. She only does this every few days, and when the time comes, she never speaks of Animals, or a cause, only of contacting Elphaba and extending sanctuary.

She can't bring herself to admit any of this.

"I'm sorry you've been worrying over me." Elphaba turns to Melena and flushes from shame. "I didn't realize…"

"It doesn't matter," Nessa interrupts.

"Maybe…" Elphaba fumbles for her words. "Maybe, if you didn't think of it as an agreement between the two of us, but as something you're doing for wronged citizens…"

Nessa laughs.

"You're the Governor of Munchkinland," Elphaba says. It grieves Melena that after all this time she still has faith in titles. "You control the largest territory. You control nearly every resource. If you cared about this, it could make all the difference."

Nessa's eyes flash and her face scrunches in disgust. "I'm an unelected official," she says icily. "I can't harbour a fugitive."

"That's not what I'm asking you to—"

"No? Speak of Animals all you want; it's hardly convincing." Nessa's voice is nearly a snarl. "You're here because you're out of options. You've lost." She tosses her head. "Well, frankly, I refuse to be a last resort. And I can't grant you aid any more than I can grant you refuge, so I think it would be best if you left." She adds, acerbically, "You're good at that."

At this, Melena feels raw panic surge into her bloodstream. She says, "Nessa, if we could—"

"No," Nessa says. "She made her choice. She left. I owe her nothing." She rounds on Elphaba one last time. "I owe you nothing. I do, however, owe allegiance to the Wizard of Oz. If you say another word, I'll have you delivered to him myself."

Elphaba winces, but she is not cowed. Remarkably. Stupidly. "Nessa," she says, "I still consider you family. I had to leave. Don't you see? I _had_ to." She falters. She breathes. She tries again. "If you saw what I've seen…Nessa, it's more complicated than you're making it. It's _always_ more complicated."

Nessa's reaction is the purest pain, then the purest loathing, and Melena can hardly stand to watch as memories war behind those uncertain hazel eyes. The anger claws and gnashes its way to a victory and Nessa flies from the room. Elphaba remains in the centre, stranded, and blinks in astonishment as her purpose leaks out of her like blood. "Where is she going?" she asks.

"To retrieve Boq, I assume."

"Boq?"

"You won't be able to leave through the door," Melena says.

"I…I don't remember what I was expecting," Elphaba says. Her voice is hoarse and her eyes glazed enough to shine. Melena has not noticed this until now. "I suppose I'll be going then."

A limp, too, and sluggish steps. Melena charges forward and lays a hand across Elphaba's forehead. Elphaba flinches and ducks but the fever sears through Melena's palm with so much intensity that she is compelled to say, "I won't have you leaving—"

"Through the door, I know."

"In this condition," she finishes.

Elphaba scowls. "And what do you propose? Should I change into my formal wear and wait on the maid to summon me to dinner?"

Melena trumps the sarcasm with blunt logic. "You have a fever," she says. "You need warmth and a meal and I daresay some rest after that flogging Nessa just gave you." The click of frantic footsteps advancing down the hall and congregating on the other side of the door. Elphaba issues a desperate plea with her eyes and Melena says, "Are you claustrophobic?"

"No."

And so Melena nudges her, a little roughly, towards the wardrobe. The hat is knocked off in the process. "Do you remember where my room is? The doors are fully closed; you won't be able to get out on your own. No one will hear you, but stay quiet anyway. I won't be more than fifteen minutes."

"But—"

" _In_ ," Melena hisses.

Elphaba's eyes are wide with alarm. "How do I know I can trust you?" The hat is stuffed in after her and she grasps it tightly, saying, "How do you know you can trust me?"

The wardrobe is wrenched shut as Boq and a cohort of four guards charge in. Melena has managed to spin towards the window, as if pondering the view of the ravine, and she releases a breathy exclamation of what is – for all intents and purposes – fright. They flick back the drapes, peer under the desk, and glance around the furnishings, murmuring to each other while they form a circle around the wardrobe with the air of a hunting party.

As they exchange a signal and haul it open, Melena's teeth sink so deeply into the flesh of her cheek that she tastes blood, but the cavity behind the doors yields nothing more than some musty ceremonial robes. Boq chalks it up to Nessa's paranoia. The guards posit Elphaba's shape-shifting abilities.

Melena puts forth a remark about being the first in after Nessa's supposed encounter and seconds Boq's theory before slipping out, stifling laughter with her wrist and making her way to the kitchen. "I'll be retiring early. If you could have dinner brought to my room," she requests of the first maid she comes across. "A soup, I think, and some of the pie from last night. And maybe a tea, the one with the mint leaves."

From there, she raids the pantry, then Nessa's chambers, filling a basket with the necessities that call to her through the fog: non-perishable foods, a nightgown, underclothes, gloves, the thickest pair of stockings that Nessa won't miss. She returns to her own chambers and heaves the lot of it onto a chair to sort through after she has freed Elphaba from the wardrobe. (Although she is of half a mind to leave it sealed until the witch business blows over.)

Alighting on the edge of the bed, Melena wrings her hands, trying to ignore the drum of her pulse in her ears until a knock on the door nearly stops it. She thanks the maid and assumes the tray, but the girl lingers and peers in.

She asks, "Should I turn down the bed? Or run you a bath?"

"That won't be necessary," Melena says. Her voice is not level. But surely it is not pitched so as to reveal that she is the mother of an unelected official and harbouring a fugitive in her wardrobe. That she is the mother of the harboured fugitive in her wardrobe. Absurd. It is all absurd.

"If you'll excuse my saying so…you do look flushed, ma'am. Rest well." The girl starts and then stops, toying with the strings of her apron. "Oh – if you hadn't heard, ma'am, word is that the Wicked Witch of the West dropped in on the governor just now. Would you have a guard posted outside your door?"

Melena nearly bursts out laughing again. She smothers it into a cough. "No thank you, Holly. I'll be fine."

When Melena flings open the doors, her harboured fugitive all but topples out, and she offers an arm until Elphaba has righted herself. "Is it amusing how much they fear you?" Melena asks. "Or was it tiresome before it began?"

"I award points based on creativity," Elphaba says, steeping in the familiarity of her surroundings. Memories of stealing in with carefully selected books play out across her face as she crosses to the door and rattles the knob. "This is not very sturdy. Perhaps you should have had that guard posted."

"I think I'll survive."

Elphaba twists and untwists the lock and presses her temple to the wood. "Will they hear anything?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

Melena adjusts the throw on the settee. "I've had a great deal of noisy lovers."

Elphaba looks askance, Melena meets her halfway, and then they are laughing, at Frex, at themselves, at everything. "Not Mayor Timsette, I hope," Elphaba says. "Or – good god – the Duke of Kvon. A bastard, if I ever saw one. And I say that as a bastard myself."

"I do have taste, you know," Melena says crossly. _In my recent years, at least_ , she thinks, though she watches Elphaba poking around the furniture and pawing through the book on the bedside table and doesn't give under her usual pang of regret.

"Have you been reading this?" Elphaba asks, drawing her finger down the table of contents.

It is Gubriel's _Unabridged History of Munchkinland_ or, rather, the late-night hankering Melena had to delve into the world of Nessa's predecessors. Melena feels uncomfortable being found out, as if she is exposing Elphaba to something that shouldn't be seen – history, after all, is little more and little less than lies and blood – and she doesn't relax until Elphaba shifts the volume and uncovers the novel below it.

"One that's fiction and one that isn't. I used to do this too," Elphaba says. "Although recently I've found that the lines dividing the two don't run quite as deep as I thought."

She looks up. Melena says abruptly, "I'll run you a bath."

When she returns, leaving the water to slosh into the basin, she finds that Elphaba is still frozen in place, the spine of the book cradled in her palms.

"Do you remember that conversation we had two summers ago? About my father's behaviour?"

"Yes."

Elphaba traces the embossed title with a slender finger. "He's a fraud," she says softly. "He has no powers. I was a tool. All along, I was a tool. The proof he didn't have. And when I wasn't useful anymore, I was refashioned. Who's going to fixate on drought and debt and bids for power when a witch might kidnap their children? Or worse: _recruit_ their children." Her lips are touched by a tired smile that doesn't advance past them. "I just…I thought you should know what became of it."

Melena feels as if her heart is being pinched. "It must be almost full by now," she says. "Toss your clothes out. I'll lay them to dry."

Complying, Elphaba disappears through the powder room and Melena sets about sorting the rotting, rumpled pile that has been shed like an old skin. There's no helping the boots, but the underclothes and the stockings – sodden and worn right through at the toes – she replaces. As she seizes the ratty cloth bag that Elphaba has set against the bed post, she peers in and an itch swirls about her fingers.

 _I shouldn't_ , she thinks, as she does.

She withdraws an old tome, musty and worn, but somehow weightless, written in strange symbols that twist and scatter before she can make sense of their shape.

She withdraws a scrap of paper that is jagged around the edges and discoloured from the elements, with what look to be directions written in a code.

She withdraws—

Melena gasps her surprise and nearly chokes on the lump in her throat as her fingers wrap around the smooth neck and draw it out. Chipped mouth, peeling label. She opens her palm and the green glass catches the light. _Miracle Elixir_ , it reads proudly, though a miracle has yet to come of it. Inside, Melena can make out the curling corners of a prayer card depicting Saint Aelphaba.

Fear uncoils, and Melena feels as buoyant as she does ill, because she is so close. A few words between herself and freedom, with the bottle to fill in what remains.

 _I am so close_ , she thinks.

But they are such hulking, destructive words and she shrinks before the prospect, even as it spreads its arms and closes in. _It's time I told you_ or _there is a reason for all of this_ or _I wish I had done better._

The gurgle of draining water interferes and the words are punctured with reality. Melena looks over the artifacts mixed into the folds of her skirt and realizes that she has taken longer than she meant to. Hastily, she tucks Elphaba's belongings away, burying them under the pilfered supplies and restoring the bag to its original place. She tries to put it from her mind, but she catches her eyes straying back suspiciously, as if it will betray her at any time.

Elphaba appears in the doorway, in one of Nessa's blue nightgowns, rubbing her good ankle with the opposite foot. Her hair clings to her in wet straggles and she looks sturdier in her bearing, but seems to be recollecting what it is to be shy. She asks, "Why are you doing this?"

"That was quick," Melena says.

"I don't like imposing."

Melena pours out a steaming cup of tea, pressing it into Elphaba's hands and motioning her towards the vanity. The matted ends of her hair could use a trim, badly, but Melena has already saddled herself with the task of explaining away a sudden illness and an uncalled for appetite and does not know what magic she could possibly work on clumps of hair that aren't hers. She resigns herself to combing it out.

"You haven't answered my question," Elphaba says, sipping contentedly.

 _Just a few words_ , Melena thinks. _End it_. "The past year hasn't been good for Nessa," she starts and it is already too late. The lies, however true, are too comfortable. Too easy. "On the whole, she hasn't had a great deal of good years – except her first year of university, and that's owing to you." Melena's hand closes around one of the damp strands. "That friendship was everything to her. I suppose I feel an outstanding debt."

She detects a tremor in Elphaba's shoulders and bends, pretending to be absorbed by a complex snag. Elphaba breathes deeply and recovers and says, "The debt is mine. That was a good year for me too."

Working in silence, Melena leaves it to Elphaba to strike up the subject she wants. Elphaba stares into her cup and winces every so often until she asks, "Do you worry about Glinda?"

"All the time," Melena lies.

"She's the daughter he wanted – or needed, I suppose, and I led her right to him. And she brought Fiyero along."

There is a difference in Elphaba's tone when she mentions Fiyero; it is nearly a caress. Melena recalls the truce that Galinda was once so determined to facilitate and meets Elphaba's eyes in the mirror.

Elphaba blushes and looks away. "Have you been keeping up with the news?"

"When I can."

"My father doesn't occupy the Vinkus. He controls it, but he hasn't moved in," she says. "He never will, because it's too sparse. The next logical move is Munchkinland – if he has it, he'll have everything. Isn't it strange? Nessa is the only political leader standing in opposition to him and she doesn't even realize it."

"Nessa, and you," Melena says.

Elphaba shakes her head. "I'm not a leader."

Melena disagrees but does not argue; her battle lies elsewhere. "Is it possible that Munchkinland would have been better in his hands?" She notes the way Elphaba's fingers tighten over the edge of the table and rushes to explain: "Nessa's approach isn't exactly ideal, and there isn't much left to sabotage, but she's managing it. When her father died, they offered to put a representative on the council to oversee the transition."

"Not out of the goodness of their hearts, I assure you."

"I wasn't having it, of course," Melena says, "but I can't shake the feeling that it was a mistake."

"You were right to refuse."

"But was I?"

Elphaba's head jerks and her reflection looks startled by the insecurity she perceives in these words.

"After all, she's stripped us of our rights," Melena hastily adds, and then she stops altogether and backs away. It is a moment before she is able to take up her position behind Elphaba again. "There was a time when I would have died before including myself in that _us_."

"Under any other circumstances, I'd call that progress," Elphaba says generously, and then she goes quiet. When she surfaces from her thoughts, she delivers her words with slow precision. "You've been right to keep her out of the fold. Nessa doesn't have the expertise to hold her own with them. I don't either, but I can run when it suits me. They'll eat her alive."

 _And how long will that be_? Melena hears, suddenly, as if Morrible is lurking nearby. Elphaba spins in the chair, without warning, and seizes Melena's sleeve. "Promise me you'll take care of her," she says. "You have to promise me."

The absurdity of agreeing to guard her own daughter is not lost on Melena, but she sees the severe – almost crazed – look in Elphaba's eyes and nods without thinking. "I promise," she says.

"Okay," Elphaba says, calming. "Okay." Her eyes drop to where she is still clutching Melena's wrist and she quickly releases it. "I just…I don't know. I needed to hear it aloud."

"I understand," Melena says, not understanding. "Can I ask you something? How did you come about the sprain?"

"Stupidity."

Melena waits.

"There was a gang of Gale Forcers on my trail and I was trying to get a look at them," Elphaba says. "I ended up tripping on some roots. It was storming too hard for me to fly, so I climbed the tree and sat there in the rain until they moved on."

"Why were you trying to get a look at them?"

Elphaba clamps her mouth shut, closing off, and does not elaborate. Melena respects this – every fragment is a gift she never thought she'd get – and parses the last few knots of hair without further inquiries. Afterwards, she sends Elphaba to the table and slides the tray across. Elphaba slurps the lukewarm soup from the spoon with strained decorum and then dabs her chin with the napkin and twists it through her fingers, staring meditatively at the concave surface of the bowl. It is not until halfway through the pie that she says, "Why is Boq here?"

"I'm still asking myself that question."

"He's friendly, but I never understood the…the attachment," Elphaba says. "Especially when – Oz, _surely_ she knows that he doesn't love her by now."

Melena scoffs. "It's hard to say. Our lovely Nessa has always had a difficult time grasping the nuances between love and servitude."

"Glinda and I, we often tried hinting—"

"Did you? Has no one told you about her condition?"

Elphaba tenses. "Her condition?"

"She suffers from selective hearing," Melena says. "It's hereditary, I'm afraid, and incurable. She gets it from her father's side."

"Not from yours?"

"What? I didn't catch that."

Elphaba's concern cracks open into a smile, though it doesn't endure for long. It fades, every time, to the same pensive frown. "She was right about us being on our last limbs – that's why it had to be today. I thought perhaps she'd be settled and I could reason with her."

"Nessa doesn't respond to reason," Melena says.

"What does she respond to?"

Melena runs her hands along her forearms, thinking, and then it comes to her. "You could try bribery."

"I don't have much to bribe with," Elphaba says, accepting defeat. "Besides, it wouldn't work – not on Nessa. She hates me. She has every right to, but it was a terrible thing to realize."

The resignation behind the words plunges into Melena like a fist. She's felt it herself so many times. "Nessa is difficult," she says. "She's hurt. But she wouldn't let herself be this hurt if she didn't love you."

Elphaba looks marginally soothed by this.

"If it's any consolation," Melena continues, "she doesn't seem to believe you're wicked. Just that you've wronged her, and I know that's its own trial, but at this point I'm certain she will always think of you as Elphaba."

A drawn smile. "So that makes a grand total of one."

"Two," Melena says.

"…thank you."

"Elphaba."

"Yes?"

"What do you do? What is your goal?"

Elphaba gauges Melena's expression, as if fearing that she is being mocked or challenged or backed into a trap. She pauses, deliberating, searching for a clue and coming away with only patient expectation, and then says, "At first, it was offensive manoeuvres. We sabotaged. We waylaid officers so that captives could escape, or so they had time to flee. We ransacked the makeshift prisons that were set up far into the provinces and we succeeded, for a time, but we've lost too many members and now we can't afford to be reckless. Half of our agents are in Southstairs." Elphaba pauses to collect herself and then tumbles back in. "There are networks that organize outposts and camps. There are underground routes into surrounding territories. The conditions are dismal but mostly safe."

The prongs of the fork squeal in protest as she draws them unthinkingly across the plate. "We try to protect new mothers and children. They're targeted because it's easy, because voices can be impeded during the early stages of their development. The children are put in cages; the mothers in prison. Any who struggle are killed outright."

"Have you ever killed?" Melena asks.

"Not intentionally."

It breaks over Melena's head like thunder; a moment of utmost force and then nothing. "And the 'we,' the 'us,' who is that?"

"I'm just the face of the Resistance," Elphaba says, "not the entire body. It's an extra little 'fuck you' to my father. I was a good get, and don't they know it."

"Do you live on the camps?"

Elphaba bites her lip. "I stay, sporadically, and I engage with them – to keep them speaking. It's so easy to lose yourself in the squalor." She nudges the crumbs on her plate. "But no, it's not a permanent arrangement for me."

"Are there safehouses, then?" Melena prods. "Somewhere you can return to? Someone who waits for you to return?"

"There are, and there is," Elphaba assures her, waiting for a reaction, for the next leg of quizzing, but Melena can hardly focus on extracting more information when she has been given so much to process. She knows she will regret this later, but now it dawns on her: _I don't want to hear anymore. I can't bear it._

Ignoring the questions that cluster and jostle on her tongue, Melena merely says, "I'd like to call in my debt."

"I won't walk away." Elphaba tenses and her shoulders go square. "I'm the only consistently effective agent. There's no one to assume my position."

"I realize that. Just…tell me there are more of them than I think there are."

"As in safehouses? Someones?"

"Either – or both. Anything."

Elphaba glowers. "I'm not completely helpless."

"Maybe not, but you're overestimating yourself." Melena's nerves rub and grind until they are too raw for her to remain in her seat. She rises and begins pacing, tallying her fears on her fingers. "Creeping up on the Gale Force. Raiding prisons. Conducting underground routes. It's not a game." She whirls towards Elphaba. "You don't see the newspapers. The lies. There's a bounty. There are _hunters_. An entire industry has been built on despising you."

"I know that."

Melena is chagrined by the calmness with which Elphaba's meets her distress. "You do realize that you're in danger, don't you? That every move is life or death?"

"It's not just my life or death. It's thousands of lives and deaths that are being overlooked." Elphaba's lips curl in anger and then purse with shame and she turns away to conceal the emotion. "You can't pretend an informed opinion when you've only seen one side of it."

"If I'd only seen one side of it, Elphaba, you'd be in the loving embrace of the Gale Force right now," Melena says.

They glare at each other and drag the argument no further. Melena clears the dishes, busying herself over the china to fill the emptiness with something tangible, with senseless clamour, though she can tolerate this better than anything she's fielded in the last few months. It is not one of Nessa's brutalizing silences. There is acceptance on both sides, clashing and spinning away and retreating into mutual submission. Melena caves first and pulls Elphaba out of her chair, guiding her to the bed with a wordless gesture. Elphaba protests over and over and then concedes and pulls back the covers in what is nearly awe. Melena can see her resisting the temptation to dive in and drown.

It is not long before Elphaba settles against the pillows and takes up the novel; Melena moves to the settee and resumes with the history. Three pages rasp before Elphaba shifts uncomfortably and says, "There are more of them than you think there are."

Melena does not believe it in her heart but she believes it in the moment. "I think what you're doing is admirable," she says solemnly. "If that's worth anything."

"It is," Elphaba says.

"I just…it's difficult for me to accept the fact that it comes at the expense of your—" Melena does not know what she means to say. Youth. Education. Future. Happiness. All of those things she planned so thoroughly for them. "If you should need anything else, I'd be happy to –"

"Harbour a fugitive?" Elphaba supplies. "Well, if you ever find yourself on the wrong side of public opinion, I'd return the favour."

They dissolve, superficially, into their texts, pretending at the absorption that they don't buy in the other. Melena feels the tingle of Elphaba's eyes glancing over every few seconds and quickly darting down again and suppresses a smile each time, seizing that brief interval to do her own scouting. She persists with this pattern and sneaks intermittent glimpses until the moment she does so and finds Elphaba asleep.

Gingerly, Melena tugs the book from Elphaba's slackened grip and smooths the hair off green temples that are no longer radiating heat, and then she retires, turning out the lamp and curling up on the settee. The late autumn chill seeps in through the window and presses down, but she is impervious to the effect even as it drains the sensitivity from her limbs. She fancies she'll coax Elphaba into breakfast and a compress for the ankle – maybe even lunch – and drifts out of herself in the cradle of a feeling that may just be peace.

She wakes, stiff and sore from the odd angle, with a second blanket tucked around her. A note sits where Elphaba's head was not six hours ago, written on the scrap of paper with the code, reading only: _Thank you_. _Really._

Later, a search of the grounds forces Melena to accept that Elphaba is gone, and she places the note among the fifteen years' worth of clippings that inhabit the bottom drawer of her desk. But she returns within the hour and moves it to the second drawer, where articles from the last two years live, and she is pleased to see something genuine atop the heap of lies.

 _Perhaps this will all work out_ , she thinks.

She does not believe it in her heart but she believes it in the moment.


	10. Rabbit Hole

**A/N [or, a few orders of business]:**

 **1.** I'm going to be posting the final two chapters this week, because…well, honestly, I haven't been feeling entirely great lately, and updating has just been stress on stress. At the same time, I'm determined to post this story to completion. So I think the best course of action is to hasten the process and get one thing off my plate, you know?

 **2.** You probably noticed the length of this chapter, huh? I can explain! I wrote each chapter to function as its own arc with its own theme (it's how I conned myself into writing the whole story – _you can do this, it's just a few oneshots_ ), and I couldn't bear the thought of splitting it.

 **3.** I want to drop a quick **warning** : these final chapters (10-12) deal with severe depression and a few brief moments of suicidal ideation. While I've never experienced grief of this magnitude, some of these passages come from a very real place, so I'm feeling a little bare and a little nervous, but I truly believe that this is the most genuine writing that I've ever done. I'd love for you to give it a chance if you're able, and I hope that it will resonate with you.

 **4.** This chapter merits another shoutout to ComingAndGoingByBubble, who is the brilliant mind behind the reading selections. If not for her, Mel would have been reading _Anna Karenina_ and _Animal Farm_ …which are amazing novels, don't get me wrong, but the only thing more on the nose would be reading _Wicked_ itself.

 **5.** As always, thank you for your time.

* * *

 **9\. Rabbit Hole**

"The Wizard will see you now."

On the far side of the anteroom, Melena startles and straightens, eyes torn from the watercolour map spread across the opposite wall. She takes in the figure of the guard and wonders how long he has been propping open the door to the office, his face set in irritation, his jacket woven in the gilded green style of the Gale Force. The impatient sweep of his hand into the liminal space ahead makes his opinion of her obvious: she is not worth his time.

"His Ozness has granted you twenty minutes," he says, punctuating it with an implicit _for reasons unknown_. "I suggest you use it wisely."

Melena nods curtly, for it is all she can muster as she strains against the full-body reluctance that drags at her bones like a current. It swirls around her ankles and swishes higher and higher, catching her hem, flowing eastward into Colwen Grounds, where Nessa believes that her mother is visiting family in the next county. Melena drives her nails into her palm and wishes she had something to clutch, some talisman, so that there could be more than a brief sting to ward off the memory of their parting. ("Have the doctor examine you while you're there," Nessa said. "You haven't looked well in months.")

"Audiences are typically held in the throne room," the guard says, interrupting, "but His Ozness has chosen to make an exception. Munchkinland is one of his chief concerns."

"How fortunate for me."

A glare ensues, and this time Melena is equal to the challenge. The guard asks, "Do you find this to be a joking matter?"

 _Of course_ , she thinks, though she doesn't jeopardize her act by saying so. For the time being, she is Cordelia Hane, a no-nonsense Munchkin envoy whose estrangement from the concept of the joke has served Melena well at every port of entry. There were near misses, naturally, when her party was halted and inspected at the gate, when the Captain was unavailable to clear her at the palace doors, when the Wizard had to shuffle three appointments and a dinner party to squeeze her in, but there was no denying Cordelia. Her will was iron and her documents authentic as they come – swiped directly off Nessa's desk and ornamented with a myriad of forged signatures. Now, as earnestly as Melena longs to shuck off the rigid shell of this character, she is terrified that the resolve that saw her through the day's trials will peel away with it.

"Twenty minutes," the guard repeats, and the current tightens again, causing Melena to twist in reverse just as she crosses under the frame. She feels Cordelia and Melena merge and her lips part to dismiss the guard or beg him to stay, to free her from this choice that she's made, though he is gone and the air stagnated in his midst.

She rests a hand over her ribs, as if to hold them in place, to steady the beat of butterfly wings against her insides, and turns to face the only man who's ever made her uneasy. She boarded the carriage in Munchkinland with the singular goal of pleading her daughter's case to him and never once thought it possible that she would make it this far: he at his desk, she on the threshold, and only two decades and a strip of sunlight lying between them.

He looks the same.

Different, but the same.

A thrill pulls her nerves taut as harp strings.

He glances up, then down, then up again, blinking, and she can tell by the way his demeanour slips in and out of astonishment that she has his full attention. Her footing falters, too, as her premeditated strategies slide out from under her, and all at once they are caught up in searching, engrossed in the strange business of spotting the child in the parent. She sees Elphaba's dark hair – mostly gone to grey – and wiry build. He sees Elphaba's eyes and jawline. A moment passes, and then they see each other.

"Your Ozness," Melena says first.

"Melena Thropp," he replies, motioning her to the seat across from him. She spies a hungry flicker in his green eyes and wonders if she's been involved with him this entire time, or never at all. "I've heard your father is ailing," he says. "You have my sympathy."

Melena sits. "I haven't been particularly fond of my father these past twenty-five years. He sold me into marriage, after all."

"Hmm."

"Though I suppose it could have been worse. He could have sold me into infamy."

The Wizard's hand stalls halfway through the note that he has taken up. He slides back into his seat and Melena is glad to have his eyes again, though the laughter in them is acutely annoying. "And here I was thinking this was a pleasure visit," he says.

"I'm here to discuss the recent developments in Munchkinland," she says. "There needs to be intervention. It's verging on collapse. The crop output is—"

"Who's to blame for that? Control your daughter."

"Oh, that's rich."

"What would you have me do? My people have no way in, yours have no way out."

Melena has seen Nessa draft policy after extreme policy without the slightest show of remorse, countering Boq's accusations with deafness and carrying on as if nothing is wrong. They sit down to breakfast each morning and behave as though the room has not been rife with whispers just moments before, that the staff does not fall strangely silent when they pass, and that the day's defiant acts have not been quelled by the time the sun falls on the western side of the manor. They will not address the fact that Boq has taken to wearing the livery of the servants in solidarity with his kin, or the fact that he chased Melena down the corridor and begged her to do the same, or that a badly aimed truncheon caught the head of a tradesman crossing into Gillikin and killed him instantly.

At a different post along the Munchkin border, Melena will forsake Cordelia's deathly glare and assume a new personality, because it is safer to lie than to appeal to Nessa's mercy. She will be Lana Farin, an inconsequential Gillikinese aristocrat with deep pockets, who is selling her property in Munchkinland so as to forestall the threat that the Glikkun tribes pose to her investment. ( _Did you know they scalp their victims? Scalping. Can you imagine? In this day and age?_ ) She will smile and prattle and bat her lashes and all the while be risking her life.

In this moment, however, she is Melena Thropp – whoever that is – and she says, "What have you done in these situations in the past?"

"Frankly, I've never had a rival of this calibre before – or at all, if I'm honest." The Wizard folds one fist into the other and cracks his knuckles. "She's bold, your girl. I'll give her that."

"She's reckless," Melena says.

"Is that so? I wonder how she happened upon that trait." He perches his elbows on the desk, arching closer, and his gaze roams over her like a touch. "It didn't come from her father, I'm sure."

Melena ignores this, to the best of her ability. "She's ripped up centuries of roots. There isn't one thing that's not been undone."

"The man could've tripped over a spine in the street, he'd have had no idea what it was."

"This is hardly the time to be drawing that sort of comparison," Melena says. "A comparison, might I add, that invokes a man who has been dead for over two years."

He refutes this with a smile that is partly playful, partly predatory, and her own spine makes itself known as a chill originates at the nape of her neck and wriggles its way down.

She says, "Would it be at all possible to—"

"Over twenty years ago, I assumed this position." _For the love of Oz,_ Melena thinks, predicting from his conversational tone that what is to follow will be too far gone to circle back to her point. "Young man that I was," he says, "I believed – rather foolishly, in hindsight – that only the formative years of my reign would require me to squander my time trying to understand your family. I would meet old Frexspar for our biannual luncheons, shake his hand, and think, 'this man will die and that will be the end of it.' Now Nessarose is tearing up my breadbasket, and you're here, and I must admit that I am as preoccupied with the Thropp clan as I was back then."

"As is usually the case, with the thorns in one's ass."

Mischief sparkles in his eyes. "I like to be liked, and Frex didn't like me."

"At the risk of being indelicate, Your Ozness," Melena says, "it may have had something to do with the day you broke into his home and violated his wife."

"I seem to recall finding a door or two unlocked."

Melena dislikes this turn. She avoids his eyes and curls her toes, because she will not allow herself to squirm in a more discernible way. Nor will she dignify his comment by parrying. Instead, her gaze glides over the books packed into the shelves behind him and she grounds herself in the varying colours of the spines. In the thought of Elphaba in this very seat, with this very view, assessing the title and thickness of her next reading project.

"I'm here to discuss Munchkin affairs," Melena says.

He grins. "Isn't that what I've been doing?"

"If the last census is to be believed, the state comprises over a quarter of the population under your care," she says. "And that's not including the people that are fed by the cultivation of the land by said population."

"All of whom you've prioritized above your loyalty to your daughter."

"Perhaps."

He laughs. "Could it be possible? You're a worse mother than you were a wife. Then again, I suppose I've known that for rather a while."

Melena grits her teeth and resists the urge to seize his pen and bury it between his eyes. _The Rise and Decline of the Vinkun Nomads_ , she reads. _Dynasties of the Middle Ages. An Alternate Civilization: The History of Quadling Country_. She imagines the notes in the margins, the dog-eared corners, and the forgotten leaflets tucked between the pages. Elphaba's history.

She says, "Are you telling me there's nothing to be done?"

"That depends."

"On?"

"What's her next move?" he asks. "What is she planning?"

"You have more ears in those sessions than I do."

He waits.

Melena relents. "I've heard tales of secession."

"So it's true."

She detects an undercurrent of interest, despite his grim tone, and follows with her eyes as he leaves his chair and paces the length of the study. "So it's true," he mutters again, and she can tell that he is hardly containing himself, because this is the excuse he has been waiting on. This is how he'll wage his war under a righteous banner; he'll free the Munchkins, gaining their support, and unite them in a different servitude. _If he has Munchkinland, he has everything_ , she thinks, and yet she'd parcel Munchkinland into a hatbox and slap a frilled bow onto the crown for the narrowest opening from which to extract Nessa with minimal scathing.

Elphaba would understand.

(Wouldn't she?)

"Tell me honestly." The striding makes Melena feel restive. She wants him seated across from her once more. "Is there a way for this to end peacefully?"

This stalls him in the foreground of the window, so that the light of the cloudless day catches his outline and spills his shadow across the floor. He says, "Well, how willing is she to concede?"

"How willing are _you_ to concede?"

A glint of impatience in his eyes, and then he softens. "It's too far gone, Melena."

"You can't just—"

"You asked for the truth," he says, and she feels her idea of him fragmenting. All along she's pictured him smaller, quieter, a man who slips through cracks, and before her is a man who hasn't had to compromise in ages. "I've consulted all manner of people on this," he says. "I don't sleep at night, because I can sense the tough decisions around the corner. I can't leave things as they are, but I can't rectify them without violence. There's nothing I can do."

"That's hardly the case." Melena's hands grip the arm of her chair, fingertips reddening, knuckles white, because she is unravelling. "I know precisely what you do here; I've seen it all my life. You sit here and you move us like pawns and you declare things like _it's too far gone_. That there's no reasoning with the enemy. You _created_ the enemy, Oscar. For years, you gathered bits and pieces off the ground, until you thought you had enough to cobble up an enemy, and when it wasn't, you gave the imaginary faction a figurehead from your own circle so you'd come out the victim."

The shift happens before Melena can restrain herself. She says, "If she's so powerful, why is she in hiding? Why isn't every entrance guarded? It was harder for me to get off my own daughter's estate than into yours." And then there are tears, in her eyes, in her voice, and she begrudges this with every fibre that she isn't pouring into berating him. "Your safety isn't at stake, your image is. She's a threat to this…this myth, and you're putting her through hell for it."

His feet still first, then his arms, then his face freezes into the same pensive frown that she loves so much in Elphaba. "You've seen her recently, then?"

Melena says nothing.

"And you haven't had a day of rest since," he surmises, reading her silence. His expression is pitying. "She's good at survival, you know."

Disbelief drives a scoffing noise from Melena's throat. "You expect me to believe that? She grew up in a palace."

"She evades us at every turn."

"She's _green_."

"I suppose flying is the key to it."

"What of her glasses? Can she see without them?"

"She mostly needed them for reading," he says. "She likes to put layers between herself and the world. Always has."

Again, Melena says nothing. There is nothing to say.

The deadlock wears on him and he resumes pacing. "She's visited you," he mutters, to himself. "This is good. Better than I thought. If you can facilitate her capture—"

Melena rears back. "Her _capture_?"

"She trusts you," he says. "God knows why, but that's the impression I've gotten." When he realizes just how stricken Melena is by the prospect, he approaches until he is standing above her. He runs his fingers over an unbound strand of hair that hangs in her peripheral vision and tucks it into place, saying, "You can't protect her from herself."

"Maybe not, but I can certainly protect her from you."

"She doesn't need to be protected from me."

"No," Melena says, pulling away, "it's those you've recruited to your side. Suppose I turn her in and she's brought to Morrible – what then?"

He says, "I'll ensure she's brought to me."

"I want her brought to Glinda."

"These are not negotiable terms."

"Then don't pretend it's a collaborative effort," she snaps, slumping, just making out the way he brushes her shoulder as he retreats into his seat. He wraps his hand around his pen and lowers it into the inkwell and she contributes nothing else, because she is exhausted, so exhausted, and the extent of it is what has led her here, groveling for a certainty that he can't provide.

 _What now?_ she thinks.

The Wizard tests the pen against a scrap. Hapless circles spiral out of the nub. "It seems to me that you should be conducting yourself with greater wariness."

Melena scowls. "Of?"

"The fact that she spent a summer in Munchkinland and was a traitor by autumn," he says, in a formal tone that she finds unnerving. "The fact that she's apparently sought refuge in Colwen Grounds. It reeks of collusion, Melena."

"It _was_ collusion, Your Ozness," Melena says. "I allowed her to have pie before her vegetables and to stay awake past sundown. Have my cell prepared."

"This is a serious issue."

Melena hates to admit that she is baffled again; that she doesn't follow the ploy. All these versions of him and not a single one to put faith in. "Must we rehash the part of this discussion when I raised the issue of Munchkinland and your response was to assert your superiority over a dead man?"

His voice emerges with a hostile undertone. "People have been detained for far less than you've done here today."

"You say that as if it wasn't your doing."

"How willing do you think Nessarose will be to trade her traitor sister for her traitor mother?"

"Now I'm truly surprised that Frex didn't like—"

There is scarcely space for a heartbeat between the rap of the guard's knuckles and the click of the knob turning. The door breaks like a seal and they are thrown into a flurry of movement, whirling towards the intruding presence as if caught somehow. The pair of frauds that they are.

"Twenty minutes have elapsed, Your Ozness," the guard says.

The change is immediate. "Thank you, Giles," the Wizard replies, on his feet, bidding the man to wait on the other side. He peers at the door until it is shut and does not relax. "I believe that will be all then."

"I'm not finished," Melena snarls.

"But you are dismissed."

Melena internalizes the order with neutrality, but protests anyway, starting, "You'd really…" and then trailing off, accepting as it hits that she was never meant to accomplish anything here. Not with the Oz letterheads and the plaques and the stark plane of the desk to tie him to his stance. "Until next time, I suppose," she says, dipping her head and taking her leave, all the while formulating her next move. She is not through with him yet.

"Have a care, Lady Thropp," he says, scrawling notes. "Times are trying." At the door, she glances over, sewing the press and crinkle of disappointment into her mask of stoicism. He meets her eyes, taunting, and her plan finalizes. She bows her head again.

In the anteroom, the guard surveys her suspiciously, and Melena reprises the haughty tilt of her chin. "I hardly think it my place," she says, "but His Ozness has instructed me to inform you that he wishes to be escorted to his dinner."

The guard's eyes narrow. "By me?"

 _No, by the bench_ , Melena thinks, ducking her face and adjusting a pin in her hair while her patience evens. The guard's fingers flex and bunch and range towards the door. "And you're to see yourself out?" he says.

"Naturally." Melena affects a sympathetic mien. "His Ozness seemed as though he needed a moment to collect his thoughts. Munchkinland is one of his chief concerns, after all." The guard's hand encloses the knob anyway, and she continues, "I remember when His Ozness would hold monthly functions in this palace…I suppose this was before your time. Being a member of Munchkinland's most esteemed trading guild, I was one of the few to be invited on multiple occasions." She shakes her head, as if reminiscing. "I'll never forget the poor fool who made the mistake of overstepping his bounds. It was my first encounter with magic, you see." Out of the corner of her eye, she sees his fist unclench and drop to his side. "I don't use the word _explosive_ frequently, or lightly, but…"

The guard detaches from the door altogether, puffing out his chest, as if dignified, though he can barely keep from gaping. He realizes himself and clears his throat, scrambling for a shred of authority. "It would be foolish of you to try anything," he says. "As soon as His Ozness is safely conveyed to his guests, I will be alerting my superiors to your presence. Should you fail to reach the gate, the premises will be searched. You will be found and you will be apprehended."

 _He can't be more than Nessa's age_ , Melena thinks. She wonders how offended he would be if she sought confirmation.

He says, "End of the corridor. Take a left. Through the doors, you'll find another guard and he will conduct you to the entrance." His lips purse into a smug line. It draws her attention to the peach fuzz coating his chin. "I trust that isn't too complicated?"

"You're a delight, Giles," Melena says, dredging a smile. "I so hope we meet again." _Though it would likely be over a dead body._

She turns to flee and her gaze lands square in the centre of the map, where the four states cluster, each one funnelling its colour into Oz's glowing green nucleus. The Vinkus, a lifeless grey at the fringes. Munchkinland, a sickly yellow. Gillikin, the pink of an old scar. It is alarming, this arrangement, now that she regards it with less passivity, and she recalls with certainty that Ozmatown did not have this effect, but she cannot sustain the visual as she creeps down the corridor that links the official wing to the audience chambers.

Instead, she summons the plan of the palace, imagining her position in relation to the ballroom, the dining halls, the guards' quarters, but an era has come and gone since her last visit and she must rely on chance. She veers right and peers around corners, measuring the weight she puts behind each step, regulating the air that seeps in and out of her lungs until she stands before a stairwell and hesitates and musters her courage and starts up the passage. The steps are worn and creaky, dim as anything, so she guides herself with a firm grip along the railing and then its absence, and finds herself deposited on a landing. From there, her bearings flood in.

She does not stray into Elphaba's room – intact or not, she wants nothing to do with the ghosts that reside there. She does, however, mortify a maid when she hazards a request for the Wizard's chambers, inciting no more and no less than a quivering finger jabbed vaguely towards the furthest doorway.

It hangs ajar, and Melena slips through without making contact, but she pauses just inside and marvels at how ordinary the furnishings are. Sturdy but plain. Functional. She sizes up the nondescript chests and the bare walls and is, quite frankly, affronted by the lack of superfluity, until she happens closer to the window and squints into the rosy sunset. People crawl over the city like ants. They dot the streets, the benches, the igniting panes of the shops and the apartments above them, retreating with the day as the sun slides into the horizon and the dying beams sprawl across the green rooftops. Melena takes in all the lights, all the lives, and it amazes her that a man with only a foreign penny to his name won himself a view of this rarity. She looks and looks and looks and then she can't, because the pit in her stomach migrates to her chest and the current catches again and she is bowled over by a wave of insignificance.

The world is large, so large, and seething with people who go about their lives knowing so little. They toil and deteriorate and die without realizing that they are specks to those who make their decisions, or that the witches they're taught to fear are just girls. Little girls. Hapless and stubborn and all too determined to find out how deep this grave goes. Elphaba, twenty-two as of a month ago, supposedly involved in the skirmish in Traum, supposedly nicked by a bullet, supposedly freeing cagefuls of Animals sold to the Gale Force by a fraudulent comrade. Nessa, ever-distant, embedded in her study, in her mess, mooning over a boy who doesn't reciprocate and orchestrating a secession that could very well litter the fields of Munchkinland with corpses.

Melena stands over the entirety of the Emerald City and she fears for their health and their minds and their hearts, but mostly she fears that one day she won't have to be afraid and all she can do is wait for that day to begin, as it will, like any other does. She will rise and dress and sit down to breakfast and the porter will serve her the headline that proclaims –

There is a stack of books on the bedside table; the only personal touch for miles. Melena flicks on a lamp and drops into the nook formed by the legs of the table and the bedframe, dragging them down one by one and barrelling into the text with no preamble.

 _My father's family name being Pirrip_ , she reads, _and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip._

Melena smiles, charmed somehow, though the words rattle about her mind and ultimately disappear into some chasm, meaning nothing. She closes the book and tries the next one.

 _Well, Prince,_ she reads, _Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family_. _No, I warn you, that if you do not tell me we are at war, if you again allow yourself to palliate all the infamies and atrocities of this Antichrist (upon my word, I believe he is), I don't know you in future, you are no longer my friend, no longer my faithful slave, as you say._

 _Genoa,_ Melena thinks dubiously, _Lucca, Bonaparte, Antichrist._ Again, the names float listlessly, and then dwindle, and she extracts no interpretation before they are gone. She closes the book and tries the next one.

 _I have wandered the face of Oz_ , she reads, _stooping and stretching to converse with Animals of all lands and climes, and my travels have left me with one conclusion, and that is that the notion of home, as it were, is a concept born of human insecurity. An illusion, and a potent one at that._ Melena's heart swells at the memory this evokes and she skims past the dense treatises, lingering over the notes in the margins, their familiar slant, the inception of the ideas that Elphaba would one day impart from her perch in the library – and yet Melena closes the book and tries the next one.

She flips the final cover and beholds three-year-old Elphaba's sloppy signature: the backwards B, the imprints left on the first page by the pressure of the unskilled hand wielding the pen. She rakes her eyes over the first line – _Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do_ – and once more the words echo distantly into some part of her from which there is no recovering them. It returns to her; the feeling that one day she will step into the world and no one will see her, that she will scream and flail and cry out, and it will not matter, because there will be nothing to contain the fragments of the person she used to be.

" _Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice._

She feels it daily, at night, in the morning, in the wake of every exchange. She felt it like a pressure on her chest, so great it thrust her outside of herself and locked the door behind, stranding her in the wasteland of her own indecision. Half a continent later and too many lies to tabulate and she has stumbled this far, chasing this mirage, though she can anticipate almost nothing of his intentions, or his history, or his personality.

" _I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," Alice replied very politely, "for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is confusing."_

The thud of approaching footsteps hacks through her meditation and Melena's head snaps up. She can't tell whether her heart is closer to starting or stopping, only that she experiences a simultaneous surge of disgust and relief when Oscar appears in the doorway.

 _I make myself so ill_ , she thinks.

He flashes her a roguish smile that sends her insides to fluttering again. "Now, when a member of my staff waylaid me after my dinner and informed me that there was a strange woman sequestered in my chambers, I almost didn't believe her," he says. "'Chestnut hair and dark eyes,' she told me. 'A little on the petite side.' As if I couldn't guess by your temerity alone."

"Good evening to you, too," Melena says.

He shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over a chair. "Can I at least offer you something to eat?"

"No, I'm quite content." She casts a glance at the book in her lap, as if she was engrossed in a private conversation, then overturns the cover and displays the title for him. "It's a strange story," she says. "I've just met the Cheshire Cat."

Nostalgia flits across his face. The spark that dances in his eyes draws his smile in with it, and all at once it is genuine. "You see, a dog growls when it's angry and wags its tail when it's pleased," he recites. "Now, I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad _."_ He extends his hand and she accepts gratefully, her legs stiff from being crammed under her for so long.

"What was her attachment to this book?" Melena asks.

He runs his fingers down her forearm, curling them around her wrist. "Three chapters every night, from the day she could understand the words, and in no time she was reading it to me."

"I can't make sense of it."

"No one can." His thumb pries her fist open. "That's the point." He draws her palm towards his lips.

Melena slides from his grasp. She restores the book to the table, aligning it with the others, but her knees knock into the bed and she is suddenly winded by his proximity. Frex aside, she's never had to face up to the same man twice – not with twenty years and two nearly consecutive pregnancies in between, or this gnawing feeling of dread for what's to come. She has had ample time to fall apart and not nearly enough to prepare. Nothing terrifies her like intimacy.

She looks at him as he is now, open and expectant and maybe even a little hurt, and abruptly asks, "How old are you?"

"Old."

"A number would be preferable."

He seems puzzled by her insistence and then laughs. "Fifty-one," he says. "And you?"

"Forty-three." It's strange to hear aloud; these days she often wakes feeling as though she's been alive too long. She taps _Alice in Wonderland_ with one finger. "And you're from here…from Alice's realm."

"More or less."

She prompts, "What is it called? Where you're from?"

"Kansas," he says.

Melena watches his brows knit as he rolls out the name like a ball and chain, and she has the sense that he's told her this before. There's a quality to it that might just be familiarity. "What is it like?" she asks.

"Sparse," he says. "Dusty."

The last traces of humour dissipate and she detects the void with a sad smile. She harbours the same disdain for Munchkinland and yet she knows that her veins and her limbs are bound up in it like so many roots – or at least she thinks so. _An illusion, and a potent one at that._ She says, "And is that what led to Elphaba's abilities? The event that brought you here?"

Ignoring her, he crosses the room and produces a bottle of wine and two glasses from a drawer, setting them on the round table by the window. "I must say, I just spent two hours listening to that bastard from Kvon go on about his prize horses and I am in no mood for an interrogation."

"But that's why, isn't it?"

He shakes his head, impressed and frustrated in equal measures, and then gives way. "It's been suggested that the mixing of our constitutions – you being Munchkin, me being American – led to the powers." He digs the cork from the mouth of the bottle, twists it out, and flicks it onto the table. "A child of both worlds – or some such nonsense."

"A child of both worlds," Melena repeats, tinging his scorn with fascination. "But then—"

"Stop there," he says. "It's my turn." The gulping sounds of liquid sloshing into glasses. He does not look up. "Did she seem well?"

Melena hasn't decided whether she owes him a lie or not before the truth comes galloping out. "She had a fever, and a limp," she says. "I suspect it was a sprain."

"And…mentally?"

"She seemed to be coping well, considering."

Oscar trades her an inscrutable glance. "She's always been stronger than she has any right to be." He beckons Melena with a nod and passes over the wine, appraising her as she approaches. How does he manage this trick – making his eyes feel like hands? He says, "You know, you're less vapid than I remember."

"And you're even more of a gentleman," she retorts, assuming her glass, coating the rim with her lips before she looks too closely and sees the imprint of someone else's smile.

"Truly, though, it was a pleasure to parlay with someone who could hold their own. _Your Ozness_ from you is like a slap in the face." He smirks, briefly, and then frowns, and this time his probing is not nearly as invasive. "You're alike, the two of you. In so many ways."

Melena is seized by a hunger for the specifics, for the blood and bones and skin of that conclusion, but she is diverted when he draws a chair and sits and begins rolling his sleeves. He folds the cuffs until they hug his elbows, and she becomes uncomfortably aware of all the grueling hours she spent with Frex, at meals, in the parlour, on the road, and how he never once granted her an action half as casual. Trying not to stare, she clears her throat and says, "You don't have many guards about. The Captain – he's been absent since I arrived."

"Don't you read the papers?" He waves her into the opposite chair, and she is surprised to find that she is still standing. "The engagement ball is in two days."

Melena lets out an unapologetic _ha_. "What poor woman has taken it upon herself to marry you?"

"Curb your jealousy, darling. The ball is for Glinda and Fiyero." At this, her cheeks flush and she grimaces, provoking him into a bout of laughter. Finally, he explains, "While Glinda hangs fairy lights and finalizes seating arrangements, our good Captain has been hand-picking his best men to ensure the safety of the guests."

Oscar sips deeply, and then adds, "His concern is that such a large gathering will attract a strike."

"From Elphaba?"

He snorts. "Who else?"

"That's absurd." Melena's voice gets louder than she means it to be, and far too accusatory. "You've stooped this low, poisoning her friends against her?"

"I've done no such thing. They've chosen to capitalize on the circumstances."

Before she means to, Melena aligns this with the impression she has of the couple; the mental image she's wrung from the press coverage that clouds their outings. Glinda: young and glowing, swathed in colourful layers and ever-cheery, presiding over an ocean of adoring sycophants. Elphaba, meanwhile, can only be glimpsed in imaginary snapshots, dress rotting on her body and face blurred, in the act of fleeing. This disparity is not lost on Melena.

"I've met Glinda," she says anyway, for the sake of arguing. "Granted, she was Galinda at the time, but I know she's better than that. She's good."

"Good?" he says. "Not objectively. But she's damn good at what she does." He looks almost remorseful as he sees her delusion crumble. "And Fiyero – let the boy have his fun. He's only trying to distract himself from the reality of the situation."

Melena says, "The reality of the situation is that Elphaba has no business attacking a fortress. Certainly not when her father and her friends are within."

"The reality of the situation is that he's been cornered." Oscar's face indicates nothing, but his tone tilts towards the challenge buried within. "You women tend to make our choices for us. No warning. No time for adjustment." Melena laughs derisively and his eyes bore into her. "You're explaining your defense tactics one moment, and then you're engaged. You finally free yourself from your family, and then you're a father."

Melena puts no stock in this claim. She's been nursing her grudges for too long. "Glinda is an exception," she says. "I don't recall being given a choice when my father had me primped like a doll and wedged into Frex's circle until it would have been indecent for him to reject the match. Or after Nessarose was born, when a council of twenty men encouraged him to dump me on the side of the Yellow Brick Road and remarry." She falters, tripping into a queasy sort of awe of her past. "We corner you or you ruin us. As I think is plainly evident here."

"You could have left," he says. "I wouldn't have turned you away. That choice was yours."

"All I chose was a clean break, and you pulled me back in."

"You chose to stay." His fingers circle the stem of the glass, tightening. "You chose to stay, and he kept you like a pet. That one you can't pin on me."

"And you would have kept me as…what? Your mistress? Divorcees can't remarry in the Unionist church unless there's also been an annulment."

"I'm not a Unionist," he says stubbornly.

Melena waits.

"As a partner," he says.

This perturbs her more than she is willing to show. Melena swirls the wine around her glass, higher and higher, and then watches the red cascade seep back into its pool. "I couldn't leave," she says.

"Why not?"

She sighs. "There's nothing natural about this city. I'd miss the birds. The trees."

"The roses?"

Melena looks up and it's all there for him to see. She opens her mouth to say – but she doesn't know what to say. He's right.

He purses his lips and splays his fingers over the arm of the chair. His voice is soft. "I've thought about it quite often, you know. I've imagined all sorts of lives for us." Melena, curious, doesn't impede him as he begins, "First and foremost, that divorce for you."

"On what grounds?"

"Adultery, I think," he says. "It would be tricky – there's no incriminating correspondence. But with a green toddler shaking the foundations of buildings and levitating objects five times her weight, it wouldn't be difficult to play the 'child of both worlds' card." He shrugs. "Worst case scenario: it falls through and we resort to a duel."

"The better of the two options, I feel."

He continues, "And then an official celebration to present us. Some kind of public joining."

"I believe that's called a wedding," she says, "if not an orgy."

"Small difference, really." He smiles, infectiously, and Melena almost releases herself into the fantasy, even when he sobers and searches her face and springs the final proposition. "And in time, a family. Elphaba, of course, and two or three more."

Melena has no rejoinder for this one. She guards her reaction closely, knowing to her very core that she could have had two or three or fifteen by him and none of them would have been Nessa.

"You should've stayed," he concludes.

"Perhaps _you_ should've stayed," she says faintly, but with enough meaning to restore them to what was. Her chest constricts as the question materializes, but she voices it anyway, "When did Elphaba begin asking about her mother?"

He ponders. "Three, the first time. Four – not long after that debut on her birthday – when she requested details."

"And what did you tell her?"

"Dead." The blow is struck quickly and with precision. Melena still can't help but wince. "It seemed the kindest route." He pours out another glass for both of them. "Does that bother you?"

"Yes, but I suspected as much." Melena drinks heartily and then trails her thumb down the stem. "She keeps that bottle with her."

"Slept with it under her pillow from the time I gave it to her."

Melena meets his eyes and then looks away. "Has she mentioned me?"

"You, as in…?"

"As in her friend's mother."

He places his hand on the table, flat. Melena wants to clutch it between both of hers, but she can't bring herself to close the gap. "She thinks very highly of you," he says, frowning. He falls still and then his eyes narrow, as if to capture her in a different light. "I have an instinct for people. It's gotten me far. But you – you baffle me. You left that baby in my throne room and I thought you must be the most unfeeling woman in Oz. Eighteen years later, she tells me Melena Thropp arranged for her to room with the governor's girl, and I couldn't figure out what you were playing at. But you weren't playing at anything, were you? You're fond of her."

Melena fails to lift her shield in time. He reads her better than he believes he does – it's what makes her feel so bare – and there's nowhere to stow the surge of guilt that picks her up and sends her plummeting.

The freefall must be evident on her face, for he immediately cushions the landing. "Don't look so terrified," he says. "She's been winning people over for years."

"She's been losing people for years," Melena says.

They lapse into a strained silence and Melena thinks she can hear her nerves thrumming, buzzing with the need to rise, to run, or at least to fidget, but she keeps her body limp until he rallies.

Almost bitterly, he raises his glass and says, "To the mess we didn't know we made."

"To Elphaba."

The vessels chime and withdraw to their mouths and Melena observes him over the rim, handsome and lean and older, but not significantly so, and it is the closest and furthest she's been from someone in a long while. She says, "What were those early years like? How long was it before you warmed to her?"

He refills their glasses again. "It seemed like an eternity at the time, but it couldn't have been more than—" he deliberates, "—no more than a year. As long as it took for her to recognize me." He smiles, recollecting. _The father in him_ , Melena thinks. "There were all these decisions: Do I raise her myself? How do I debut her? What story do I peddle so there's no doubt she's mine? _Is_ she mine? I didn't make much of an effort to be around her in those first months, but then one day she recognized me and her eyes lit up and she squirmed like anything to get upright and that was the point, I found, when she ceased to be green and was merely Elphaba."

Melena blinks. She has nothing to offer him; she is so destitute. _I love you, Mummy,_ Nessa said, with the unchecked conviction of a child, and for days Melena would feel as though she could conquer anything. It has been so long since then.

"Can I ask you something?" he says. "Why? When you stole into my throne room that day, what was your motive?"

"I wanted control," Melena says slowly.

"How so?"

She is careful with her reply. If she opens her mouth too wide, chunks of her innermost self will fall out. "My husband was scandalized. He told me she was stillborn and sent her away with the midwife. Bringing her here was the only closure available to me."

"That bastard."

He lays his hand closer to hers and still she doesn't move. It is like describing the actions of a character in a novel, though she is dimly aware of the guilt, the anger that still burns, all the nothing she's packed in to temper it over the years. "While he was dying, I waited for him to mention it," she says. "I didn't need repentance – or even an apology. I wanted to know that it I wasn't the only one involved in the whole thing. I wanted to hear that it happened, and that he was a participant." Her voice is lifeless. "He didn't say anything. He just died."

"Good riddance."

"You shouldn't malign the dead," she chides.

"Yes, but good riddance anyway."

He slides his fingers through the spaces between hers. Melena's eyes dart to his face and then drop to their hands. She says, "I've been out of my mind since this began. How do you bear it?"

"I don't," he says, and for some reason she doesn't push him. He traces the blue vein down her forearm and then back up, lingering where it forks at the heel of her palm. It doesn't seem like part of her: pallid and immobile. He says, "I meant what I said earlier – though maybe not so malevolently. You ought to be more careful. Morrible's on the prowl, and I can only keep her off your scent for so long. Elphaba and Nessarose are the only threats to her power."

" _Her_ power?"

"She's bound to stumble on the link eventually and use one against the other. If you come along and she can nab them both in one go, do you think she'll hesitate?"

Melena fights the revulsion that tugs at her gut; her stomach churning the ghost of a meagre lunch and half a bottle of wine. Her brows knit. "Why don't you let her in on it, then?"

"I won't betray you."

He almost sounds solemn. Melena laughs and says, "How chivalrous. You protect me for years and yet you send a specialized force after your own daughter." Her hand disentangles from his and pulls away, as if repelled. "And not just trackers. You've sent _hunters_."

"My daughter absconded with a powerful artifact that took centuries to uncover," he says.

This comes as a surprise to Melena. She thinks of the tome that Elphaba carried with her; the force it gave off and the shifting figures within. Details of Elphaba's crimes riddle the papers and yet this has never prompted as much as a passing mention.

"What good is a powerful artifact to a man without powers?" she says.

"As good as his powerful allies."

"What ally would have been more powerful than Elphaba?"

The list wells. Morrible, he might say, or Glinda, or any of the fanatics he's collected over the years, but they both know that a thousand of them wouldn't be half as valuable or devoted to him as Elphaba was. Instead, he argues, "She spends her days aiding my political enemies."

" _Political enemies_?" Melena says loudly. "They're citizens. They were studying and working and marrying in Oz while you were still nothing. They were tutors and midwives and—"

"My hand was forced."

"She'll die."

Melena's blood goes cold as the truth torrents out. She's never admitted it this bluntly, but she does not regret doing so now. They're circling back to the road that led nowhere; they will argue until the navy sky is clear again and nothing will change. "She'll slip up, Oscar," she says quietly, "and she'll be killed for it. There are so many ways. You think of them too." Her hands meet and pull and twist each other. "It will be a bullet from one of your men. Or she'll take a bad fall. She'll approach a feral Animal without realizing. Dehydration. Exhaustion. Disease. She won't stop until it happens."

She has ended up, somehow, on her feet. They carry her in no particular direction. "There's no end to this unless you make one," she says. "You need to reverse the Banns and re-assimilate the Animals or—"

"I'm handling it, Melena," he says.

"You're handling nothing! You're handling engagement balls and dinner parties!"

He slides onto the edge of his chair and reaches out, but she evades his grasp. "There's a plan in place," he says with finality, trying to calm her. "She's bound to return at some point. I intend to make her an offer she can't refuse."

"I don't buy that for a moment."

"Why not?"

She says, "They're just words to you. They don't mean anything. Just like you've told me, just like that interview—"

"What interview?"

Melena whirls to face him. "I'll speak to Nessarose," she says. "I'll put Elphaba under the protection of her sister and Munchkinland will champion her cause."

"You'd start a war for the sake of one girl?" he says, aghast, and the enormity of it descends on her like a deluge.

She says, "You wouldn't?"

"You'll be—"

"Traitors by autumn. Why not pre-empt Morrible?"

It catches up to her then; in half a second, fatigue twines around her ankles and yanks her into her seat. She stares unseeingly out the window, as he rises and treads the room and says, "That's the opposite of what you want." His tone is calculating. "The influx of Animal refugees will be too much of a strain. How will Munchkinland react? You'll be stretching their resources and their trust; you'll have a revolt on your hands – in addition to the action I'd be forced to take against you."

Melena brings her arms onto the table, hands cupping elbows, forehead drooping towards the surface. "If the Munchkins hate you, they'll forget what Nessa's done to them."

"It doesn't work that way, love," he says gently. "They'll rally behind whoever makes them the best offer. Right now, that's anyone else."

"Then I don't…" Melena's vision blurs. Her voice hitches and the world doubles and falls away. "It's ending. I know it's ending, and there's nothing I can do."

He is by her side and she feels his hands on her shoulders, gathering her hair from her temples. _This is your fault_ , she thinks, her face falling onto her arms, her body shaking. She waits for him to call it a bluff and he doesn't, because she looks up midway and she is undone. Her sobs are real; real and furious and strangely comical, so she laughs and Oscar regards her with confusion, even as he pulls her up and draws her into his chest. He brushes his lips against hers and then kisses her in earnest, but with a tenderness that surprises both of them. It's almost as if they're a united front.

"You're a callous woman, Melena," he says, "but not as callous as you—"

She kisses him this time, and harder.

He pushes her away and spins her towards the window and then pulls her back into him, his lips working over her ear as his hands pull at the buttons, sliding the fabric off her shoulders and around her hips. She feels the familiar ache uncoil in her midriff and moans. There's no deluding herself anymore – she wants an anchor, she wants reassurance, she wants none of that, she wants to bury herself in his arms and mold her body to his and feel like Alice again.

They hit the bed and join, and come apart, and he kisses the rampant pulse in her wrist and the crease between her brows. He slides his hand up the underside of her thigh and touches her so that the ache builds and builds and bursts and hurls her headlong into another crying spell, and by the time she has no tears left to her she can't be sure if she is lodged in a dream or a nightmare.

The daze ebbs in fits and starts that wrench her back into reality with no small amount of violence, and each time it seems that he is there to draw her closer, stroking her damp forehead as she cries again, as she dozes again, as she runs her fingertips over his ribs and caresses the spot where she'd slide a knife in if she had one. She kisses his face, all over, and clings to him, curling her arms and legs under his so that they are one knot of eight limbs.

He says, "Stay another night."

She wakes alone.

Sunlight presses softly against her eyelids and she reaches for him, but her fingers close forlornly around air and slide back to her over the barren folds of the sheets. Her clothing is laid out across the foot of the bed, the pins that have fallen from her hair arranged in a neat row by the empty glasses on the table. She dresses quickly, donning her hood and sneaking out a servant door, the book that she seizes from the table tucked tightly into the crook of her arm as she merges with a boisterous crowd of tourists.

The city gleams with dew and pulses with noise. Melena makes it as far as the first bench beyond the gates and fixes her eyes on the cobblestones by her shoes, too dizzy to tolerate the sight of people. They bustle by as if their bustling matters, with shopping bags and hat boxes, with pocket watches and briefcases, with their own agendas and no attention to spare.

 _You have no idea_ , she wants to say to them.

She only keels over and brings her hands to her face, concentrating.

In a few hours, she will be posing as Lana Farin from Gillikin. She will wheedle her way through the border and then she will return to Colwen Grounds and lie about her father's condition. Eventually, Elphaba will turn up and Melena will lie again, but she does not know how she will manage this, for she looks inside of herself and everything is awry. Maybe it is because she has not eaten in sixteen hours, or because she has mended nothing, or because she is heartsick and ashamed and too small for her own skin, but she sits perfectly still and all the while she is falling, falling, falling.


	11. Impact

**10\. Impact**

There is no funeral because there is no body.

This is what Melena is told when the new governor deems her strong enough to bear it. She listens mutely to his secretary – a polite young man of, perhaps, twenty-five – and wonders what it could mean. No body to inter? Nobody to attend? The probability divides evenly into these reasons. Nessa's regime has burned her name into Munchkin history: the second most despised governor, the third briefest duration in office, the most gruesomely cast down. Melena spends too many hours with the _Unabridged History of Munchkinland_ splayed across her lap, labouring over these rankings as if they mean something.

They don't; they only make it apparent that Nessa must be mourned in the face of Munchkinland's wrath and relief – or else in secret. Melena lauds the decision to forego a ceremony and asks, "Who was behind it?"

"It was Glinda the Good, naturally," the man says, and it is the _naturally_ that quashes the feeling of solidarity and stokes a fire in its place. As if the goodness lies implicit in every swish of fabric, every flounce, every cloying word that drips from Glinda's tongue, though she has chosen to embed herself in a band of frauds and fiends. The Captain of the Gale Force and Morrible and the one Melena won't think about and this little girl, Dorothy, who is poised to be Glinda's deputy for all the yapping that's done about her virtues. The champion of their freedom. The heir of the notorious jewelled shoes. Trapping the daylight and sending ruby sunbeams across the road as she flits towards the capital to receive her due. Melena thinks she could very well crush the air from that skinny throat with her bare hands.

But she couldn't. She wouldn't. She doesn't even think that – not really. The girl is eleven. She will stand before the crowds in the Emerald City as Elphaba did at that age, radiating uncertainty, and she will churn out the same naïve faith that Nessa had in humanity. The fits of malice that engulf Melena stem from confusion. She does not know how to navigate this loss. She only knows that anger weighs less than remorse – and, even so, she is not so quick to succumb to it anymore. She is returning to herself, gradually, painfully, assembling the wisps of information that filter through the mist distorting all memory of the days after Dorothy's landing.

There was that first sight of the house. Melena recalls springing from the carriage before the driver pulled on the reins and bounding towards the wreckage, just off the estate. A white clapboard shell. The roof caved in. Furniture buckled in on itself and strewn across splintered wooden planks. The world lurched, just then, as it all became real to her, and she thinks she must have fainted, for she woke up in her bed and promptly resolved that she would never leave it again – and almost succeeded in the endeavour too. She drank her weight in wine and lay there for nine days, rising only to spiral down the black throat of her own guilt, sleeping in increments that were too long and then too short, eating nothing and retching anyway, and repeating the process until she reached blindly into her trunk for another bottle and came away with _Alice in Wonderland_.

Fear revived her, even if just a little, and compelled her from her chambers to ensure that Elphaba was alive. She tracked down a recent issue of the _Munchkin Mirror_ and read its installment of "Witch Watch" and in accepting the fact that Elphaba was still fighting a war that Nessa could not, she accidentally inured herself to the truth of the loss. This is better in some ways and worse in others. She can recollect her own name, but also the last words that Nessa said to her. She can loop a bridle around the few emotions still rattling about her brain, but she suffers them just the same. She can tolerate the stares of others, but she thinks endlessly of the wrongs that Nessa did them. Wrongs, she knows, that will not be forgotten any time soon.

It almost doesn't seem that way, however, and Melena credits the residents of Colwen Grounds for their grace, even as she finds their wary conduct disquieting. They don their liberty like ill-fitting clothes and dip their heads and murmur _sorry for your loss_ or _you're a welcome sight in these halls_ , but mostly they flee rooms and duck around corners and avoid contact if it bodes prolonged conversation. This is because she carries the mark on her: of grief, of shame, of the hole in her chest where twenty years is scrambling to fill the ninety that could have been. It is not natural for a mother to outlive her child; it reeks of failure – years of it or one colossal lapse. Or both.

The de facto governor, Bfee, is chief among these judges. He is crude and coarse and grasping, a mediocre cheat who's been upjumped from a mayoral position, and he fancies himself subtle as he informs her that her time at Colwen Grounds is up. He has the endorsement of the Wizard of Oz – it can be found right here on this decree, which was presented to him by Glinda the Good. The implication of that? His word is practically law. Melena chews on the inner flesh of her cheeks and struggles to pay attention through the frenzied thump of blood in her ears. She hates to see him in Frex's study, squat and florid and dwarfed by the high back of the chair, issuing commands as if he has any right to, sporting that beady glint of cruelty in his eyes.

He clears his throat, loud as an engine, as if he is aware that she is not listening. "I'm sure you realize that it is highly improper for an unmarried man to be occupying the same lodging as a widow."

"Perhaps you ought to leave then," she says.

His face puckers in outrage. He gesticulates and blusters and finds himself flustered by her recalcitrance so he dismisses her, receiving the smile she shoots over her shoulder like a clip on the jaw. They are three strong, she and her family of ghosts, and as long as she inhabits Colwen Grounds he will remain under the thumb of the Thropps – a hierarchy she clings to, if only out of spite. He moves in his staff and discharges half of hers, confining her to small wings of the manor and stationing sentries where her territory meets his. But she carries on as if unperturbed. Her roots span for miles in every direction, gnarled and cumbersome, and he is only a weed that's sprung up in the aftermath of a storm. Let the Wizard send an ordinance to bully her off the premises. The only thing that can be taken from her is of equal value to him. She is untouchable. She will stay.

She has to.

Because they don't know, these invaders, that this is the garden that yields the most promising banks for snow forts and this is the library where Elphaba spent an entire summer and this is the table where Nessa drew clumsy portraits of anyone who would sit for her. And maybe, just maybe, if Melena enters at just the right time, in just the right frame of mind, Nessa will be there drawing and she can explain everything from the beginning. Elphaba. Milkflowers. Dormitories. Letters lying about Frex's condition. The day she crept into the Emerald City and said _I've heard tales of secession_ and thought _I will put Elphaba under Nessarose's protection_ and never once considered that it was Nessa's life she was gambling on.

 _I didn't mean for this to happen_ , she will say. _I never thought it could. You deserved better in everything_. _Better than I did by you._ The night of her return. The eerie stillness as she ascended the stairs. When Nessa stood on wobbly legs and forced a note into her hand and it was Melena's wildest dream and worst nightmare all at once, because she opened her mouth to gasp an inquiry and Nessa said, "Why would they send this if you were at his bedside?" and when Melena looked down, she saw that it was a message informing her of her father's death.

The world ripped in two – she recalls this with clarity – and her vision fuzzed as she was confronted with the decision to plead guilty or deny, deny, deny. She opted for the latter, of course, and Nessa went pale with the pain of it and the pain of everything and Melena knew in her heart that it was all over.

How was she to tell Nessa that she had borne a child that wasn't Frex's – and not a year after their marriage? That she gave Elphaba away and turned Nessa's life into a series of contrived events with the singular goal of rectifying that mistake? That their happiest memories were mired in lies? Melena cast her lot in with a plan that had never been on a course for fruition and it was over before it began; doubly so, when she saw that the doors of her wardrobe were hanging ajar and the clothing crammed to one side. From there, she took a minute to realize that Boq was absent. Elphaba had turned up, this was clear, and Boq had left and the combined blows destroyed Nessa even as they filled her deepest desire.

To this day, details of the altercation have not found Melena, for Boq didn't return and Nessa could finally afford to discard her mother like a threadbare stocking. She tottered about the manor, eschewing every circumstance that would have put them in close quarters, and Melena didn't see her for days – not until she heard from the porter that the governor sought her presence in the courtyard. Melena nearly burst with joy, thinking herself forgiven, but she flew down the steps and saw a carriage waiting. The driver was seeing to the horses while two men wrestled a trunk into the cab and Nessa stood – a sight that never lost its novelty – before the bustling group, maneuvering them like puppets.

The joy curdled into an apprehension that quickly drew Melena to Nessa's side. "What is this?" she asked.

"You ought to see to your father's affairs," Nessa said, almost flippantly. "I've had your things prepared – and I believe you've eaten. There's nothing to hinder an immediate departure."

"Immediate departure?" Melena said. "I had hoped we could—"

Contempt flashed in Nessa's eyes. "You're his only issue, after all, and you owe it to him. Though I understand that loyalty is something of a foreign concept to you."

Melena will always envision Nessa as she was that morning. Her tall figure could have cut an impression that was almost imposing, but she was so small on the inside, so frail with hurt and rage and thwarted trust. An uncertain child filling an adult's shoes.

Nessa shifted. "I just…I'd like to know one thing," she said. "Were you in Munchkinland? It only requires a 'yes' or a 'no.' You can manage that much for me."

"Nessa…"

Nessa's face fell.

"Can we—"

"No, it's alright," Nessa said smoothly. "I wouldn't have believed you anyway." She dropped her arms to her sides and walked away with painstaking care and an awkward lunge, as if each step was a leap of faith, and this is the last Melena was to ever see of her daughter, for she was in Dead Tree Heights when they brought her the news.

Melena wants to believe that she started awake with a premonition, that it was raining heavily and the skies were a foreboding black and she was on the brink of penning a warning. _Something is not right. Don't go out today, Nessa. Don't go._ She closes her eyes, however, and she sees herself as she was, standing dumbly in her father's study, breathing in air that will always be redolent of dust and smoke and the soul-searing dread of failure he instilled in her. She was sighing in frustration, contesting the clause that bequeathed the estate to his hounds when a terrible howl ripped through her head and knocked the wind from her chest.

She tried to pass it off as inconsequential – age, illness, imagination – but within the hour a messenger barged in, panting, squawking the phrase "urgent news" over and over. He sat her down and began the tale and she knows that she felt the sofa beneath her, but it was as if she was floating above her body, looking down on the conversation. She was paralyzed by the absurdity of it and her head swam, _out of the sky_ , and she could hardly keep calm but she did, _piloted by some girl from a different world_ , because she did not understand, _dead on impact_ , she did not understand why anyone would play such a horrendous joke, _Glinda the Good is on hand_ , to pretend that her daughter had been smothered by a house.

When Melena finally spoke, her thoughts reeling in and out of comprehension, she could only squint her eyes and ask, "Different world?"

"Kanziz? Kanzaz? I wasn't clear on the pronunciation."

"Kansas," she said numbly.

At this point, the thread dwindles into nothing. Nessa is dead. Nessa died at twenty-one with her heart split down the middle and a state full of enemies and no one to share the burden. Melena stands in the shadow of this realization and does not know how to break free. She has never been religious. It always seemed foolish to her, to toss one's faith at the sky, but she regrets this now. She's sick to death of the translucent veil of denial; she longs for the opaque solace of delusion – anything so that she doesn't have to go on thinking of her daughter as decaying flesh. Stray particles. The subject of an unspoken eulogy that beats relentlessly against her skull and never materializes.

Nessa. Nessarose. Daughter of Governor Frexspar Thropp. The baby that Melena wanted and did not want, tiny and pink and broken, delicate as porcelain, cooing and squirming and budding into the brilliant little girl who clamped motherhood around her like a manacle. Melena, mid-twenties, vain and petty and determined to hold herself separate from everything and everyone, foolishly believing she could float through life without attachment and then falling unthinkingly into the trap of love, thrumming with hope and fear and pride so powerful that it couldn't have been real. But it was. _It was_. Wasn't it?

She can't help but treat those days like a dream – an era that is worse than gone; relegated to memory, past tense, tearing through her when she unwittingly takes up a key to something that has been locked away in the recesses of her mind, quelled with no small amount of solitude and wine and sleep. _Nessa, my love, I would have kept out of it if I had known. Elphaba would be nothing to me. I would stay with you, here, forever. Just the two of us. I would be here and you would be safe and nothing would ever hurt you._

Melena does not mean this. Even now, she is lying.

It helps, though. Keeps her afloat. Melena breaks the surface and treads and it becomes clear that she will survive the stupefying flashes of pain. She contends with the gravity and the misery and when she has finally battled it all into submission, diminishing the voices to a soft but steady hum, she finds only an absence. She stares at the walls that have witnessed so much of her history and wants, more than anything, to hear Nessa laughing and talking – about the weather, about lunch, about her deepest fears and loneliest days. Melena would even take a silence. But there is nothing beyond nothing.

The grief wraps itself around her core and tries to pull her under again. It is so hard not to give in. She squeezes her eyelids shut and sees Nessa receding down a corridor, a door slamming shut in her midst. But which way? What door? _Whereabouts unknown._

Fists bunch in the sheets, breathing evens, and Melena pretends that she is nothing but limbs as the mist crawls in. She dozes, lightly, but does not recuperate, and this is the state that she is in when her maid appears in the doorway and half-guides, half-muscles her to the room at the end of the hallway. Melena wants to claw and wail and run as they merge with the staff members who crowd the door that once opened on Nessa's nursery, but she holds herself rigid and hears them out.

"Bfee finally got up the nerve to clear out the study, ma'am," Holly says. "Jerminy caught him ordering his people to dispose of the governor's things. He had them all piled up by the door and…well, we snuck in and took them." She studies Melena's face, as if expecting to be admonished. "We figured since Glinda already gave away the shoes, you should have your pick of what's left. Everything of hers that was in his wing – it's all here."

Melena, trembling, grasps the knob and peers into the room. It is a mess. The canopy hangs askew. There are crates scattered across the carpeting. Dolls that Nessa hadn't touched in years. Clothing ripples out of the wardrobe; the blue sleeve of the Shiz uniform. Pink wallpaper and shelves dotted with figurines from various trips. And letters – piles of old letters, tipping, fanning out across the desk. If Melena focuses, she'll make out her own penmanship.

Her hands grope hungrily over everything in reach, as if to absorb an energy that is long gone, and then Melena thanks each of the servants in turn. It is so strange, to have someone on her side, and she bears nothing less than gratitude for what they've done here, but she rushes them off and collapses against the door in exhaustion. Someday she will return to this room to sort through the squalor or give it all away or set it on fire, but now the mist unfurls again and pries at her like cold fingers and she must do her best not to submit. Nessa. Gone. Bruised bones and torn skin ground into the earth. Nessa. Everywhere. All these vacant rooms. A rising chorus of recriminating voices.

There is a bottle in Melena's dresser, half-empty. Bottles, smashed, split into shards with jagged edges, and there are places on her body where the skin is so thin that the vessels show through.

She has had this thought before, but this is the first time she renders it before herself with any kind of impartiality, with no call to oblivion. Just naked fact: there is a bottle and here is her skin. Whether or not they will meet is yet to be decided. It may not happen – not this time, not any other time. Melena can't forget that she touched those objects and stayed upright and it was her first victory in so long. Infinitesimal. Still a victory. That is Nessa's life, packed between four walls, and Nessa's life is linked inextricably to Elphaba's, still going, and to her own. Perhaps she won't need that bottle. Her heart will learn to bear the load. It always does.

After this, Melena begins taking daily walks to the house.

It is, bizarrely, the one place where Nessa's ghost does not chase her down. Melena can dwell at the site for hours without feeling a thing. The wind roars through the leaves and squirrels skitter across cracking branches and she almost admires the world for being so full of life. Sometimes she studies the clouds, or the birds, or the fragments of Dorothy's past, but one day she comes across a bunch of rotting poppies on the sunken porch and their presence is nothing short of consuming. There are no footprints in the vicinity. She knows only one person who could steal onto a scene like this.

That night, Melena locks herself in her chambers and packs a satchel. She puts thought into this one, gathering candles and inkwells and a comb and fitting the items around the book that she slides in before anything else – the one about the little girl who fell into a world that grew curiouser and curiouser until she had no choice but to acclimate. Melena flicks through the pages and is not especially sorry to be passing it on. She knew from the moment she seized it off the table that it would not remain in her possession.

"You should have an escort, ma'am," the guard says, as Melena sets out the next day. "The Witch has been spotted in these parts."

Melena is all but buzzing with anticipation. "If I haven't returned in an hour, you'd best send out a search party," she snaps.

The leaves are still swaying. There is a storm on the horizon; Melena tastes it on the breeze as she drops onto the ground and splays her palms in the dirt. She will wait all afternoon if she must, but she does not have to, because Elphaba brushes aside an overhanging branch and steps from the grove with another fistful of poppies.

Melena feels for the first time in days that she might cry.

"How are you?" Elphaba asks.

From anyone else, the inquiry would be met with little to no response, but an upsurge of relief allows Melena the strength for an ambivalent shrug. She even parts her lips to try for some trite response that will alleviate the tension – _this hole in my chest is not half as severe as it looks, I swear_ – but it congeals too thickly in her throat and she can't wring it out.

"It's a worthless question, I know," Elphaba says, catching on. "I just wondered if you're – if you're recovering." The circles around her eyes are as deep and purple as bruises. "I hate that she died this way. I mean, I hate that she died – but especially this way. She deserved so much better in everything."

"She was a terror," Melena says, and the truth spreads sourly across her tongue. "There was so much anger in her, even from the time she was a child, and I never truly figured out how to contain it. I know she was lovely, I'll never forget that she was lovely, but she was just as destructive."

Elphaba slants her eyes down and wavers, as if expecting to be sent away, and then she drops inelegantly to Melena's side. "You don't have to pretend any longer," she says. "I know she was manageable before…before me. I put that anger there. I'm the root cause of all of this."

"Is that what you think? Don't think that."

"But—"

"Don't think that," Melena says. "She was plotting a secession. They were going to take action regardless."

"You didn't see what happened, though, so how can you determine that? It was awful to see her so – and the last thing I said to her was—" Elphaba's face scrunches in confusion and she halts halfway. "Didn't you hear anything that night? The shouting and the…the clanging. It was a commotion. I thought when I came through your wardrobe that you must have been in the library or the parlour—"

"I wasn't there."

"Oh."

The three words echo through Melena's head like someone else's voice, like three incriminating bells, but she tries not to make this apparent as she asks, "Where did you go afterwards?"

"You don't know?" Elphaba stares for a brief moment and then irons the surprise across her features into blankness, realizing suddenly how removed Melena has been from the world. "I went to the Emerald City," she says. "He made me an offer I couldn't refuse and I refused it." She nods vaguely at the ruins. "This isn't just the result of a secession. I can guarantee that much."

"What is it, then?"

"A trap, I think, if not outright punishment," Elphaba says. "They knew she was like family to me and figured they'd draw me out – and they were right. I keep coming back and I don't know why."

"I'm sure she would appreciate you being here," Melena says.

"No, she wouldn't."

Melena laughs.

A bird calls from the branches thrashing above them and they both glance up in unison, stealing glimpses as it hops and swoops and disappears into the sky. Elphaba is first to turn her chin down, sighing, and then she shakes her head with no subtle amount of incredulity. "The Wizard of Oz," she says. "Glinda the Good. Captain of the Gale Force. The Wicked Witch of the East. Everything's a front, isn't it? Just roles that we've been assigned…and by whom?"

 _Some vindictive deity,_ Melena thinks, _or else no one, because the world is act upon act until you can't be sure there was ever anything real underneath._ But she hardens her heart around the opinion and softens her expression into one of sympathy and remains silent.

"I don't think I can do it anymore," Elphaba says quietly. "Life gives you things just to take them away."

"Maybe so, but it has an odd way of continuing to give."

Elphaba peers sidelong and makes no effort to wipe the tears that slide from the corner of her eye to her jaw and then through the air, spreading stains that can't be discerned on the dark fabric of her skirts. She finds Melena's hand in the dirt and squeezes. Melena returns the pressure.

They are still for some time and then Elphaba laughs bitterly and says, "A secession?What was Nessa thinking?"

"She wasn't," Melena says.

"There had to be something more going on," Elphaba says, "or else how would my father have known enough to pre-empt it? She must have been planning a strike or colluding with someone sinister – something must have pushed her."

Melena retracts her hand from the cold green palm and studies her daughter. The stillborn baby. The girl with the wide owl eyes. The Wicked Witch of the West. The only honest thing. Melena is no more and no less prepared to explain than she ever was, and she knows with certainty that it is now or too late, but she has so many things to relate and not nearly enough words with which to relate them. They come to her, half-formed, half-true, or simply wrong to begin with, and then fizzle into nothing.

She relinquishes them, failing, and merely says, "The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round."

"But that's from—" Elphaba freezes, interrupted by the sweeping calls of men's voices and the swish of boots through grass. There is a gravelly growling that might just be hunting dogs.

" _Hell_ ," Melena says.

Elphaba springs up in alarm. "Who is that?"

"Bfee's guards."

"No," Elphaba says, as if in disbelief, and then resignation infiltrates her bearing, in the slump of her shoulders and the play of unspoken words across her face. This is her cue to leave. She must. But she hesitates. "If I don't see you again…thank you. And I'm sorry."

 _Thank you_ , Melena thinks dully, _and I'm sorry._

The words enclose her, like an embrace, like a vise. She wishes she had the courage to return them. She wishes she could tell Elphaba that eight thousand two hundred and seventy-nine days ago she stole into the Emerald City with a baby that was neither normal nor her husband's and every night since the knife has been twisted a little further in. It is buried so deeply, she wants to say, that it is as much a part of her as her fingers or her spine or her heart.

But Melena does not do this. Instead, she shoves the satchel into Elphaba's hands and grits her teeth and hisses _go_ and Elphaba is gone.


	12. Dirt

**A/N:** Let me just say that this one was a _struggle_. I had a weird set of parameters for this story, and one of them was that I wasn't going to use any line breaks; every time jump and memory had to flow organically from whatever came before it, stream-of-consciousness style. And we're dealing with multiple flashbacks here, so it took me weeks to map out the relationship between Mel's past, present, and future, and the transitions between them. The whole thing ended up requiring about two months of work. But I'm very happy with how it turned out. And I think it's pretty neat that it matches up with the 'stages of grief' model.

You know...denial, anger, bargaining, depression, vengeance...

* * *

 **12\. Dirt**

Melena digs.

She digs because it is all she can do. She digs as if it matters. She thrusts the head of the shovel into the dirt and ignores the way her protesting muscles bunch and convulse when she jerks it upwards. A blister bubbles between her thumb and forefinger, burning with an intensity that is half an itch and half a sting, but she spares no heed for this either. The pit is almost to her knees.

It can't be real. This notion, this grave – it can't be real, but it is. The wind whips at her skirts, flicking handfuls of dust into her face, and Melena is her own worst nightmare as she flinches and blinks and lets out something that is not quite a sob. She rallies when she can and drives the shovel into a stubborn clump. It doesn't pierce the surface and she stomps the spade in with the flat of her foot, gritting her teeth as the toll of exertion sears through her body. There is a clammy dampness where sweat has soaked into her clothes, pooling under her arms and trickling parallel to her spine. But the sunless chill creeps along her legs and into her joints. She will be ill by morning, and Holly will send for the doctor again. He will take Melena's pulse and brew another sleeping draught and say, "I've yet to find anything wrong."

 _You've yet to find anything wrong, you dolt_ , Melena will want to say, _because everything is wrong_ , but she will only look trustingly into his bearded face and nod as if she values his expertise. He will smile through his pity, then leave, and she will stare at the ceiling and berate herself for letting him off so easily. She packs so much in; soon her skull will reach capacity and burst.

The rough rasp of metal cleaving the earth. The thump of displaced grains landing behind her. Melena embeds the shovel in the hollow where the slope of the pit is becoming more pronounced and thinks of the day she commissioned the gravestones from the mason.

"Shouldn't they be in order?" he asked, fussing over the plan she'd drawn.

She simply said, "No, I'd like it this way," and did not tell him that she was determined to have Nessa's stone on the plot reserved for the wife, because she could not bring herself to leave Nessa unprotected on one side, but required Elphaba to be as far from Frex as possible. Nor did she tell him that she knew it was absurd to refer to the girls this way, as if Dorothy left the luxury of corpses, or that the porter had brought her the post that morning and she'd thought _maybe this is word from Nessa_ without thinking. It had merely been her father's lawyer confirming that the estate was now under her name – a forgettable matter, and yet the slip would plague her for days.

 _Sometimes I am afraid of myself_ , she wanted to tell the mason, but she only thanked him for his time and exited the shop.

Since then, Melena has ascended precisely zero notches on the scale of recovery – or so she believes. She digs and digs and it is like she is gouging into herself, exorcising more than there is to exorcise, and continuing in it until she draws the lantern closer and glances at the engravings on the first stone: two linked dates and a name carved in blockish script above them. She makes it out through the shadows and the world is utterly still, just for a moment, despite the thin cascades of dirt slipping down the sides of the pit.

It is deep enough, she decides, and so she clambers out and retrieves the bundle of letters that once resided in the first drawer of her writing desk. As she tips them in, she catches snippets – or maybe absorbs them through her fingers: _Who let me believe that 'Introduction to Philosophy' was a good idea? I'm still not sure what Elphaba is hoping to accomplish. He's been such a pillar of strength. If I'm to live in these conditions interminably._

Melena has no words to say. She does not mull any memories. She drops the packets into the burial plot that was to be her own and regards the pale heap they form at the bottom – some are still in slit envelopes, some are loose pages folded over themselves – and then she curls her sore palms around the shovel again. The moon slides through the sky and the clouds shift and she tells herself that it will be easier the second time, but it never is.

"Good news from the Vinkus, Your Ladyship," he said.

Was it Mayor Timsette of Wend Hardings? Or that insipid minister of agriculture – the one who always slurped his tea too loudly? Or Bfee himself? Melena can't dredge a face from her mind and fasten it to the memory, even with the distinctiveness of their voices and years of exposure to them. She only recalls being summoned to the study and hearing those words and throwing everything she had against the brittleness that stole into her bones. It pried at her resolve with icy fingers and worked to drag her down from the knees, but she clenched her fists and did not crumple, because she'd known. From the day Elphaba based herself in the Vinkus, in Kiamo Ko, with no more than a troop of winged monkeys for protection, she'd known.

It hadn't been easy – steeling herself, that is. For weeks, Melena was stationed in the library with the paper in her hands and the world coming down in chunks around her. She was prepared – or she tried to be. But she wasn't. She retired into the darkness of dread and woke in the embrace of expectation and still it was a shock as it happened. The Wizard had won. He'd installed one of his puppets at the helm of Munchkinland and rid himself of a faulty ally, and the Prince of the Vinkus at that, and Elphaba played into her role perfectly, exposing herself with the brazenness of a villain who had nothing to lose.

And Dorothy. The champion of the public. The darling of the press. Melena closed her eyes to ward off the daggers concealed in the endless coverage of the mission, only to succumb to the next temptation and find that the runt had made it further along the map. Fear kept the Vinkun tribesmen at bay, but their reports flooded in, augmenting the speculation that emanated from the Emerald City: Glinda the Good was poised on the western border, seeing off Dorothy and her companions. Dorothy was camping on the dead shore of Kellswater. If all was well, she'd be crossing through Kumbricia's Pass right now. She was being hosted by the generous people of Nether How – not two days' travelling distance from the fortress of Kiamo Ko.

Time raced at a crawl and the suspension was almost too much to bear. Years of having been strung up by the tautest nerves, of fear and strain and worst-case scenarios, all condensed into mere weeks as Melena sat in paralysis and listened to the popping of the last few seams that held her together. She imagined her daughter on the ramparts, glimpsing doom in every silhouette, maybe even welcoming it, or skulking through the Grasslands in some ill-fated bid at an advantage. She imagined herself in the aftermath of what was coming and writhed in the strip of moonlight that fell across her bed and thought: _I can't do this again_.

She imagined that there was hope and laughed every time. Even in the agonizing interlude when Dorothy vanished into the depths of Kiamo Ko without a trace, without abject violence, and there might have been.

"Good news from the Vinkus, Your Ladyship."

Melena stood in the doorway of the governor's study and heard these words and the last seam popped loudly in her ears. Just like that, she was untethered. No longer of this world. She stood on the stark plain of her secret and screamed and remained silent all the while. _I can't breathe, I can't breathe,_ she thought, truly believing that her heart would forfeit and the end would close around her right then. She couldn't endure it – not this time. It was too much. Too much. She was taking too much water into her lungs. Gasping. _Make it stop. Don't make me do it again. I can't do it again._ There was nothing left, nothing, and yet a voice stabbed into her and inspired so much pain that it must have been life.

"We ought to invite Dorothy back to Munchkinland after she's had her audience," Bfee said. "She was ours first, wasn't she? Oz should be reminded of that."

There was a tremulous moment and then a solitary murmur, which begot the same in another man, then another, and spread until the room was thrumming unanimously. A few glasses chimed as they were drunkenly smashed into each other. Laughter shot up, soaring above the din, and draped over every grinning head and unoccupied gap, enfolding Melena like an unwanted embrace. She blinked and registered Bfee's proposition and the moment pulsed before her and rushed back in: too many people packed within the walls, and all in various states of celebration. Drinking. Jesting. Handing off their coats to the staff and easing themselves into the armchairs.

"You will do no such thing," she said.

Instantly, the chasm opened between Melena and the officials, and all the joy drained out of the study. "Whatever your feelings were towards Nessarose, I urge you to remember her father, and all the good he did by you and your domains," she said. "His legacy is worthy of your respect, at the very least, and you ought to honour it by keeping Dorothy from his family home."

Her words siphoned the last of the mirth from the room, lingering in the thickening air, and the surprise veered into guilt on their contorted faces. They gaped and were too still or too fidgety, like criminals, like children, astounded by the audacity of the woman who'd once sat demurely in the parlour and rattled off idle questions about their occupations. They looked at her, blankly, and seemed to be realizing for the first time that she had stood behind Frex all those years, or that they had cheered on her daughter's demise, or maybe that she was still in existence.

"Munchkinland will never have a more reliable governor."

"I remember the time…"

"…and sent it from his own stores…"

"It was remarkable, wasn't it?"

"A grievous loss."

At first, Melena didn't realize that they were agreeing with her. She listened dully to their remarks until they took on meaning, and then she was flummoxed by their fickleness, even as she struggled to keep up. For the briefest interval, they directed the acknowledgement her way, but Frex's ghost was quickly clawed from her grasp and drawn into their private circle, leaving her on the lonely plain again. She watched them, as if through a veil, and didn't have it in her to be angry – not yet. She simply waited until the prospect of Dorothy's visit was no longer being bandied about, and then she left.

She hurled herself into the corridor, whirling one way then the other, and nearly collided with Holly, who opened her mouth to impart something that emerged as a squeak and then died on her lips. The maid looked a little eager and a little apologetic, no doubt having listened in on the scene, but she perceived Melena's disorientation and took her arm before saying, "You shocked them, ma'am."

Melena laughed hollowly. "I expect that was the first time they heard me say something that wasn't to the effect of 'does your drink need freshening up?'"

"They're awful," Holly said.

"Nothing out of the ordinary."

From the corner of her eye, Melena saw Holly's face twist in sympathy. "You must see her everywhere you look."

The words were shears through Melena's composure, and she almost said _I do, I do_ , but it occurred to her that Holly was referring to Nessa and she couldn't bring herself to think about both girls at once. A shudder rolled through her and she became uncomfortably aware of her own vulnerability – if something didn't batter one side of her heart, it was bound to pierce the other.

"I think you ought to be the governor, ma'am."

Melena breathed shakily, as if she could hardly do it, and said, "That's sweet, dear, but I can hardly stand to be _ma'am_ right now. Would you see me to my chambers?"

Eventually, they closed in on their wing of the manor and Holly guided Melena to her bed, because Melena could not make it herself. She didn't feel right in her body; it didn't fit. It was limiting, and she was reeling somewhere beyond tangibility. She had – and still has – the impression of having been on the wrong end of a deception. Somewhere along the line someone lied to her, made her believe it was a trade: this for that, one for the other, but she stands here, on the brink of the second grave, and all she has are the yellowing pages of old newspaper clippings.

She doesn't look as she heaves them in; she's only conscious of the exchange that occurs. Her fingertips are coated in ink and the paper is stained with blood – a product of the arduous digging, which she now sees was entirely necessary. The newspapers occupy far more space than the letters. There are full issues, owing their preservation to the once-popular trend of implicating the Wicked Witch of the West in every minor mishap and gross calamity. There are relics from a decade ago, torn raggedly around awkward photographs and overly zealous captions. There is a note that says: _Thank you. Really._

There are so many memories, so many worries, and they all make their ungainly way into the pit.

"My husband was too stricken, and I was unable to mourn her," Melena said of her stillborn baby. The mason hastily offered his condolences and apologized for inquiring about the purpose of the second stone. It's rather basic – the exact size and shape of Nessa's – and the engraving is a single date. Melena topples the last of the clippings over the edge and leans on the cool granite until her breath returns. She is too hot, too winded, and chagrined by how much there remains to do, but intent on doing it anyway, so she wraps her shawl around the shaft of the shovel and hefts one load of dirt at a time.

 _Even when it's the truth it's just more lies_ , she thinks. She recalls the doctor feeling her forehead for a temperature and saying, "Forgetting is the best medicine."

It was his second visit. Earlier that day, Holly had come in to make the bed and found Melena fixated on the knife from her breakfast tray. "I wasn't thinking," Melena protested – and she hadn't been – but Holly requested the doctor's insight anyway.

He felt Melena's forehead for a temperature and said, "Forgetting is the best medicine," with unchallenged confidence and left her a sleeping draught that she downed in one go. Melena does not forget how the chalky mixture slid over her tongue and left a residue in her throat that was still there when she woke. Nor does she forget looking into his smiling eyes and remembering what he'd told her twenty years prior. He was thinner then and his hair was less grey. She wanted to nurse her child and he said, "You could damage the baby," but he meant, "You could damage the baby _more_."

No one ever told Frex he could damage the baby. Melena does not forget this.

Fiyero, she later learned, was pronounced most sincerely dead just before Elphaba took up residence in Kiamo Ko – executed for defection and other vague reasons. Melena does not forget doing the calculation on her fingers: Elphaba had two nights with him. _Life gives you things just to take them away._ Nessa and Fiyero. Within days of each other. Melena wishes she could forget this. She wishes she could forget saying, "Maybe so, but it has an odd way of continuing to give," as if that meant something.

She wishes she could forget the circumstances of Elphaba's death.

Melted.

Dorothy _melted_ her.

Melena heard this tale via the chatter that permeated the walls and doors of Colwen Grounds and her first objective was to infer the truth. For all her attempts at intimidation, Elphaba would not have had it in her to kill a little girl, and this must have granted Dorothy a window. But for what? A knife? A bullet? A spell? Melena groped every shape she could make out through the eternal night and no one would oblige her with a lantern. She roamed for a short stretch and then turned back, reluctantly, because she was alone, utterly alone, and she could not bear to confront whatever was lurking in the shadows. She clung to her daily routines and tried to outrun the despondency. It snapped at her heels, threatening to drag her away, but she refused to give in.

She succeeded in this, and she did not.

This time, Melena could hardly figure out how to combat the grief, because she could hardly figure out if she would wake up in such a state. There were days when she wandered the halls as if parts of her had been hacked away with a dull machete, as if she was missing whole chunks, and days when she felt she was capable of establishing a new outlook on the expanse of empty time ahead. _I will live honestly_ , she told herself, temporarily forgetting the seismic effort it took just to live, searching for beauty in the small things, but never holding to the practice for long. It wasn't sustainable; it wore her out. For all the beauty in the small things, the streets still rang with festivities.

Melena ducked and swerved and retreated into herself and none of it was effective. She no longer read the newspapers, but the headlines sought her anyway, and each one settled in the pit of her stomach like a stone, weighing heavier and heavier. She was in exile. She hauled herself out of bed and looked at the eggs on her plate and seemed to be thinking: _This could use more salt._ She was really thinking: _I gave her up. I gave her up, and now she is dead. I promised her I'd care for Nessa and I didn't even do that much. Was the book enough? Did she know?_

An abyss – it felt like an abyss, and she on the cusp, so close that her toes were wriggling in the dead air. Melena trained her eyes into the indefinite depths and discerned nothing: no answers and no soul with whom she could share her qualms. She thought, fleetingly, of a solution that could alleviate the pain of banishment, but did not entertain it beyond the span of a day, acceding in the wounded reaches of her heart that there was no recourse to be found in the Emerald City.

 _Perhaps the father in him exists after all_ , she thought hatefully, for Morrible busied herself putting out innumerable pronouncements and his name was not attached to a single one. Glinda oversaw Dorothy's departure, sending her home with shoes that neither of them had any right to, and took to touring the major towns of Gillikin so as to affirm her relevance in the outer provinces. The Scarecrow begged off, but the Tin Man and the Lion indulged heartily in their newfound fame, and there seemed to be mass amnesia both within the palace and without. The affiliation between the Wicked Witch of the West and their beloved leader did nothing to curb the peoples' jubilance, and the jubilance did nothing to spur him to action. He was more absent than ever.

Melena endured the silence until she couldn't and then relinquished the last of her hope and did not know what to do with herself. Days became interminable, dawning and crumbling away like eras, flattening her hard-won strength into lassitude; a weariness of life that shrunk the world to the perimeter of her room and imprisoned her there. She burrowed under too many blankets and resented every noise that met her ears, for even in a place of safety she was constantly assaulted by the fact of other lives rushing on. They were like battering rams against the base of her skull, splintering whatever remained of her sanity, and so real that the concept of peace became synonymous to oblivion.

"I could've sworn she was improving," Holly said.

The doctor's voice resounded through the door. "Ordinarily I'd prescribe some kind of retreat – a visit to family, perhaps, but I suppose she has no family."

"She has me."

Even through the fog of semi-delirium, Melena was touched by this devotion. She submitted to the doctor's futile palpitations, for Holly's sake, and later feigned a smile when Holly brought her dinner and sat at the vanity, but it hardly made a difference. She felt low, so low, and so invisible, so she requested three vials of the sleeping draught and drained them in succession, falling into and out of herself as if into a novel that she lived for a time and then set aside.

She dreamt of Nessa. She dreamt of Elphaba. She dreamt of Frex, of milkflowers, of the thin line between existing and not. She dreamt of herself in a green palace with a fraud for a husband, of elixir, of his skin all over hers and two or three more. She dreamt of her youth in Dead Tree Heights, of her parents, of the smell of rising bread and roses in the gardens.

"I think you're—"

"You're too sentimental for your own good, Melena."

"History is _begging_ to be written."

"We're all mad here."

She dreamt of the future, and it was darkness.

The moon sheds a radiant halo that catches the three, four, five stars dotting the sky above her, glinting like eyes. Melena leans on the shovel and looks into this light and thinks of that darkness and for half a terrifying moment it is the latter she sees. It is stasis. It is a trap. It's like sprinting. For miles. Forever. But Melena is tired of running, and she is tired of endings and longings and feeling like a distant onlooker in her own life. She concentrates on the tactile knowledge of the wood against the ravaged skin of her hands and plants firm feet in the loam beneath her. Bury the blade in the mound of dirt and tip it in. Do it again. Breathe. When you look up at the sky, the stars are still there.

 _Beauty in the small things_ , she thinks perfunctorily, recollecting the hours she spent with her tutor and his telescope in the musty attic of her childhood home. He named constellations and bade her to record their positions and spoke of the hundreds of years it takes for cosmic entities to move a discernible degree.

"My oldest friends," he called them.

Even at the age of eleven, Melena felt dubious. She pressed her face to the lens and made no reply, watching the stars, shrinking back as they watched her, and thinking it a cold and impersonal interaction.

But they do sparkle prettily, don't they?

Melena grips the shovel and she sees the stark figures of the little girl and the Rhinoceros in her mind's eye and she tries not to imagine where Master Lenx is now, for she's certain the stars did little better by him than they did by Reginalf Pantherin or Doctor Dillamond or Elphaba—

 _Beauty in the small things._

Sometimes Melena would like to start screaming and never stop.

In this way, the dreams cured her of all lethargy and did nothing to cure her of herself. She stirred and tore free of the web, strand by strand, and when she burst into consciousness, scattered and febrile, she was not expecting it to be as late into the evening as it was. Her eyes fluttered, adjusting, and she tilted her gaze towards the sliver of sky that fell through the drapes, realizing that the self-imposed darkness had broken down and she could see stars. She slid from her bed and felt the floorboards wince and groan under her feet. She touched the white hem of her nightgown and the knobs on the bedpost. She undid the latch and forced the window open and it was as if the world was hers for the taking.

When the sun hit its pinnacle and the door swung on its hinges, Melena spun to greet Holly, smiling, and assisted in clearing the debris from the tray that clattered to the floor. She complained of a distracting tightness in her legs and stretched them by traversing the halls, then the grounds, then the path to the rotting frame of Dorothy's house. Eventually, she complied with another medical examination – at Holly's behest – and nodded along to the doctor's stern litany of warnings.

"You're fortunate to be alive," he told her.

Melena laughed, as if joyous, and saw him to his carriage. The next day, she proposed that Holly dredge up walking boots and accompany her into town, for the unbearable tension was still locked around her limbs and she yearned to divert herself with the noise and motion of outside forces. Holly, of course, was an easy sell on the matter, and so they were not long in unbolting the gate and turning directly onto the path that joined Colwen Grounds to its neighbouring hamlet.

Each step was capped with an identical one, drawing them further and further from the blurring form of the manor, and Melena supplied lazy observations about the mildness of the weather in order to quench her misgivings. She was matched platitude for platitude by Holly, lapse for lapse, and given just enough space to restore herself to the world in fractions. At first, it was the gravel skidding underfoot, then the breeze sifting through her hair and the sunlight that spread itself over her skin, and then they crested the hill and stared down the fork in the road and it was the anxiety on Holly's face.

"I'll be fine," Melena assured her, infusing more confidence into the claim than honesty warranted, so Holly conceded and deviated towards the market with her usual list of errands. Melena, for her part, meandered the main streets alone and realized just how thick the partition was between herself and the Munchkins. She nodded at those she passed and registered at the library, and it was as if she was miming and shouting her intentions from the opposite side of a transparent wall – and one with an entirely separate history, at that. It was too thick to penetrate, and yet she insisted on rushing it headlong, over and over, as if it would vanish in the brief span between attempts.

She browsed the specialty shops and conversed with the vendors by their carts and promptly discovered that repetition did nothing to ease these interactions, and continued to do nothing, even as she purchased a bouquet of lilies that she did not like and a pastry that she had no desire to eat. She simply juggled the packages in her arms, as if they had a purpose, as if she had a purpose, and continued down the road. When she happened by the newsstand, she dallied and inhaled deeply and picked up the _Munchkin Mirror_ – and she was floored.

The Wizard of Oz was gone.

He was in the Badlands, or in Kansas, or somewhere nearby – or perhaps dead – and Glinda the Good had assumed his position. Madame Morrible had been imprisoned on charges of corruption and murder. Every day, new policies were being unveiled to repeal, to reintegrate, to recompense, and things were changing rapidly.

 _Making Some Wrong Things Right(s)_ , read the headline.

"It's about time, isn't it?"

Melena was jolted out of her daze by the unfamiliar voice. She affected a smile, though it felt like a grimace, and reluctantly met the over-exuberant eyes of the stand's proprietor as he came towards her.

"It's only been a few days, but you can already feel a transformation in the air, can't you?" he said.

"I suppose," Melena said.

"Glinda's our best bet, I'd say."

"Oh – yes."

He tapped the crease in the paper that she was still holding before her midriff, sending a current through the flimsy pages and coursing down her unsteady wrists. "There was always something off about that family – something unnatural," he said. "We should have known from the time it came out that the girl was green."

"I suppose," Melena said.

"And for a man to condemn his own daughter? Wicked or not, I could never do that to my little Lianne."

Melena's fingers twitched as she folded the newspaper in on itself and thought _he's gone_ and had no idea what tone she thought it in. It was like casting off her cruelest demon and oldest friend in one shrug, and she did not know how to cope as her stomach swooped and she went spiralling through the emptiness. She excused herself on the pretense of a headache and made as if to pay for the issue, but the man waved her away and told her there was no need – it was all in the name of goodness.

The mist curled around her as she stumbled to the fountain at the centre of the square and lowered herself onto the ledge. She tried to pretend that she was glad to be rid of him, that she wasn't feeling anything other than triumph, but she peered wistfully down the lane as if to pinpoint the corner where she'd caught his eye and he'd grinned back at her and she'd unwittingly granted him permission to mine out her heart while it was still beating in her chest. He'd done so, with relish, and then he stranded her with the burden of the past and she despised him for it, but she felt so terribly alone that she would have cleaved to anything.

 _He's gone_ , she thought.

She fixed her eyes on the photograph of Glinda that was embedded in the article on the front page. She could not exactly tell what it was that she was dwelling on – there was too much pounding through her mind and yet it was a blank slate – but she stared until her vision flashed and a strange intensity took hold of her, then she stuffed the paper into her bag and shifted her attention to the rowdy group of children chasing each other over the cobblestones.

"Witch!"

"I'll get you, Dorothy!"

The boy weaved through clusters of people and a maze of carts and circled back to the fountain. He curved his hand into a near-fist and submerged it in the pool, waiting, and when the girl on his trail was within range, he raised his weapon and splattered the front of her dress. She let out a shriek and flailed her arms as she slumped to the ground, then squirmed and giggled as he christened her with the excess water trickling from his fingers. Wayward drops caught Melena's skirt and she flinched, but did not turn away, staying rapt until their minder emerged from the bakery.

After the woman berated the children and sent them scampering towards their schoolroom, she turned to Melena and offered a look of solidarity but not of recognition. "You know how children are – everything's a game to them," she said. "They don't know where we'd be without Dorothy."

Melena hefted another wan smile from the weary depths of her soul and then ducked her face to conceal the expression that followed and saw her reflection in the rippling pool below the ledge. She lost herself there until the woman was gone and when she glanced up, she was confronted with the shadowy splotches where water had sizzled against the road. She couldn't concentrate on anything past them, so she quickly leapt to her feet and toured the rest of town.

She paid a visit to the chapel and lit a candle before the fresco of Saint Glinda, for it was always Nessa's favourite. She shaded her eyes against the glare and read the sign in the mason's window. Finally, she ambled by the coffeehouse, listening intently, and it was her first brush with Munchkinland's discontent:

"Say what you'd like about Nessarose; she was darling as a child. Just darling. The trouble didn't begin until they sent that girl to Gillikin."

"Remember the sessions that Governor Frexspar used to hold in the courthouse? For the people to petition? It's a rare thing, to be listened to by your governor."

"I've been saying it for years. Haven't I been saying it for years? It was no Wizard that kept us fed, and it was no Ozma neither. It was the Thropps."

Their grumbling was casual and well-practiced, as if they'd been doing it for a decade, though Bfee had been occupying the Thropp seat for a matter of months. Melena went slinking past every gathering that she came across, eavesdropping, and it was the first she heard of the governor's exploits. He'd taken advantage of Glinda's policies to promote the proliferation of Animal labour – at unfair wages, naturally – and enacted a new land tax that struck the poorer regions of Munchkinland with unrestrained savagery. Moreover, the rains had not been enough to yield sufficient crops in Appleton, his own county, and he'd reportedly said, "They'll just have to make do without."

 _Bloody Bfee is running Munchkinland into the ground_ , Melena thought.

She roamed up the length of the road twice more, ruminating, and then settled on the edge of the ravine, at the designated meeting place, and waited for Holly to return. By the time she spotted the slight figure closing the distance between herself and the low roofs of the town beyond, Melena was almost too depleted to stand. She felt hunted and bruised – as though the whole population had contrived to put her through a mill several times over and then wring her out like a rag. Conversation was not within her limits, so she posed a few questions and sent Holly slanting into an account of her three younger sisters, of her ramshackle home in Wend Hardings, of her father's death three years previous and the pride she took in supporting her family, and also of the relief she'd felt upon escaping their grief and self-pity.

"You have to get out," Holly said. "The important thing is to get out."

"Thank you," Melena said suddenly.

She took hold of Holly's arm to curb her and looked earnestly into her face. "Whatever there is to come, I truly appreciate the care that you have provided me over the past months."

Since then, Melena has been pushing herself into town every day. At first, she was gracious and charming, letting on to nothing more personal than a fondness for sunshine and long walks, and she bided her time, careful not to conduct herself in a manner that intimated the presence of a motive. She earned the trust of the townsfolk and they came to identify her by her route through the square, if not by her face, and then by her name when she devised the plan for the gravestones and revealed it to the mason.

Within twenty minutes of her doing so, the information circulated and the stares commenced, plastering over her pores and driving inward like tacks. Some eyes went soft and others went steely and they grated equally, but Melena endured the discomfort and the sleepless nights and the friction, smiling and nodding, and soon enough her skin started to get thicker. Ultimately, they are healing exercises, these ventures, only their aim is not to close the wounds and provide a means of scabbing over – they gouge in and widen the gaps until the gaps are beyond mending, and she feels no remorse as she applies the pressure that feeds the fire searing up her nerves.

Because the truth of it is that she loathes the Munchkins.

She loathes the feckless children for their ignorance, for their susceptibility, and she loathes the feckless parents who insist upon steeping them in such virulent nonsense. There is the man who praises Glinda when she stops by for the _Munchkin Mirror_ , and there are the voices carrying from the coffeehouse, venting opinions that have been falsely bent around the idea that Nessa was darling and Frex was reliable. Melena hears their complaints and she witnesses their lives and she takes in all of the rights that could not be stripped from them: they whelp their children and they hold them; sometimes they bury them and then they mourn them and no one ever says, "They don't know where we'd be without Dorothy."

At the end of the day, Melena returns from her trips and hugs her knees to her chest, grinding herself further and further into this private hell. She feels the tendrils of a new anger tickling the back of her mind and lets them swirl through her body, finding that she is able to sustain these bouts for longer than she could before, for they are smoother, more constant. They sit in her gut not as a stone but as an ember, growing hotter and hotter, fueling her, and she nurses the tiny flame until she can harvest its energy. Why not? For the entirety of her life thus far, she's slumped down wherever she's been directed to and she's played along, wrapping herself in so many layers of nothing that it began to feel like something – and now it is all bare and she is nothing again, the dreaded nothing, and she is free.

She fills her days by pacing, incessantly. She keeps tabs on Bfee and his guests via Holly. When he pulls up the drive in a sporty new carriage, or when he cracks his fat knuckles and exposes the rings that seem to have materialized there, she documents it in a ledger alongside the figures that tally the meagre funds he's expended on the betterment of the state.

She is calculating because she does not have the will to be anything more effusive.

She digs.

Over the course of the night, she slips in and out of her skin, carving two pits in the earth and filling them, and by dawn there are only swaths of meticulously paved dirt where she's buried the last of her daughters.

After the shovel is replaced in the toolshed, Melena drops onto her bed and does not stir until she is roused the next morning. She calls out that she is not decent, that she will take her breakfast in the dining room, and then she regards herself in the mirror and laughs. Mud coats her forehead, bound to dried sweat and a smear of blood that angles into her hairline, and fatigue slices into her bones with every step towards the wash basin. Her hands are like gristle and there is no fingernail that hasn't been cracked into an uneven ridge. She brings them before her and sluices the grime from her face and then rubs the flaking blood from the lines on her palms. She descends the stairs and seats herself at the table, primly spreading the napkin over her lap.

She looks at the eggs on her plate and thinks: _This could use more salt._

Initially, Melena regulates her investment in her surroundings, but it swells, and she watches from her window as a torrent sweeps through Munchkinland and all evidence of her presence is forgotten by the waterlogged turf of the Thropp burial grounds. A few days later, the gardener quits and Bfee orders his secretary to do the maintenance in the soil patches, weeding with no more than hand and heel. Melena lets the young man struggle for a time and then turns up with a trowel and a pretty smile, and it is the beginning of a liaison that ends in articles of correspondence between Bfee and his banker in Gillikin.

She reads the agitation within the realm of Colwen Grounds and correlates it with the rumours abounding on the far side of the gates, measuring the rise and fall and then marked rise of discord, and making use of her forays into town to ingratiate herself to Munchkins of all demographics. The cutting stares evolve into heartfelt compliments and the heartfelt compliments evolve into pleas for action and Melena's popularity soars to an altitude she hasn't yet seen, for she's venerated as the relic of a better time and capitalizes on the advantage.

She lends her voice to the discussions in the coffeehouse, telling them exactly what to hate about Bfee and why, and she grooms their responses so it seems as though they've arrived at the conclusions themselves. When she spies the children squabbling over their roles in the chase, she learns their names and confides, "If I were playing, I'd rather be the Witch," and suddenly the streets are teeming with imperious little Elphabas. She wanders through the crowds as if she is one of them and she carries it all with her – the mist, the darkness, the fire – all of the things for which there is no proper name and no explanation and no need for either, because things improve, in whatever twisted sense of the word there is to constitute adaptations that favour the most ominous parts of her.

There are still days, of course, when Melena feels paper-thin, and days when she is certain that air is not quite making it to her lungs, but she gains as she loses and comes out more cunning than ever before. She misses Nessa terribly and she longs to speak to Elphaba again and it makes no difference to Bfee, to Morrible, to Dorothy. She could order multiple sleeping draughts and rot in her chambers, and it would make no difference to the dismal reality that reigns beyond the walls, because there is no difference to be made unless she throws all her weight behind it.

"I think you're—"

"You're too sentimental for your own good, Melena."

"History is _begging_ to be written."

"We're all mad here."

Melena closes her eyes and instructs herself to focus and does so until she is no longer subject to the throb and thrall of emotion. She waits for the right moment to wrench free and slips away altogether, and so by the time Glinda puts in an appearance, she is collected enough to face the woman who rose in the world on the backs of her daughters.

"Let's not prevaricate," Glinda says bracingly, and Melena's stomach clenches as contempt lances straight through her core. She curls her fists and bites her tongue – _there's nothing to gain from transparency_ , she thinks – and takes pains to uphold an expression that is devoid of any reaction, scouting the gaping space behind the desk and hinging her attention on the dust particles that speckle the air.

They float lazily in the light trained through the adjacent window, and Melena almost laughs at the banality of the view, at the familiarity of the tactic. She's been relegated to the supplicant's half of the study, from which Bfee has been ousted for the duration of Glinda's stay, and she tracks the stream of sunlight to where it terminates against the wardrobe and promptly fails her as a distraction. The wand rests there, just another facet of a persona that dazzles where it doesn't intimidate, and the stray beams dance over a head of icicle-like spikes.

"You have no fondness for me," Glinda declares. "You think I'm complicit in Nessa's death – and I don't blame you for doing so. In truth, I think myself complicit in Nessa's death—"

Melena lifts an eyebrow. "And you've come to be relieved of your guilt?"

"No," Glinda says, and the effort behind her even tone is barely detectable. "I've come to Colwen Grounds to formally introduce myself as your new throne minister, and for the purpose of facilitating an alliance between the two of us."

"I hardly see why you'd deem that necessary."

Glinda goes on as if uninterrupted. "For that to happen, we'll have to overcome our prejudices."

"Our prejudices?" Melena says.

"You've thought me selfish and inconsiderate since we first met all those summers ago, haven't you?" Glinda's lips pull into a knowing smile and she raises one hand in a gesture that is as clement as it is silencing. "You don't have to deny it. I've been susceptible to ulterior motives for most of my life, and until recently they've been oriented the way of personal gain. Even at Shiz, I wasn't fully aware of my influence—"

"May I stop you there, Lady Glinda?"

This trips Glinda mid-sentence but she collects herself before she goes sprawling, gaping, as if wounded, and then frowning as she is obligated to relinquish control to Melena, who watches the lapse with some satisfaction and then readily accepts the transfer.

"I'll be blunt with you," Melena says. "I've just lost a daughter and most of my faith in goodness – innate or otherwise – along with her, so your quest for redemption means very little to me." She stalls for a moment, wondering if she is baring much more than is necessary, and then notices the almost petulant set of the confusion on Glinda's face and goes on without thinking. "Whatever choices you did or did not make, the fact of the matter is that you weren't there when Nessa had need of you at Shiz and you weren't there when she was in danger. It's not the full story, I realize, but it leads me to believe that you were never an especially devoted friend to her."

The words sizzle in the air and Glinda pricks herself on the truths wedged between the embellishments, recoiling as the successive sting of it saps the colour from her cheeks. She snaps her mouth shut and tightens her jaw around what must be the worst of the refutations, but then her lips purse into a haughty line and she smiles too sweetly, forsaking a last attempt at delicacy.

"I suppose that puts us on a similar keel, then," she says, "seeing as you were never an especially devoted mother."

There is a subtle rustling while Glinda shifts within the abundant layers of her gown, stooping to access the lowest drawer, and then produces a small wooden box, which thuds against the desk and releases a gravelly screech as Melena takes it into her hands and slides it closer. Somewhere between undoing the clasp and tilting the lid, she goes numb with the realization of what is inside.

"I was there when Dorothy…when it happened," Glinda says, "and I found this afterward. Apparently it's changed hands a few times."

Melena pries the little green bottle from its nest of shavings and the world shrinks around her. There are white streaks where the label has folded and worn down; the chip along the mouth has dulled and deepened – and yet it incites the same tumult within her as it did the last time she was confronted with the unmistakeable sheen of the glass. A few years ago. All those years ago. A thousand feelings collide with a thousand memories and the result is a lethal host of regrets that crowds her from the inside out.

"He also left you this," Glinda says, proffering an envelope. "I ask that you read it here and then allow me to look it over."

Melena laughs emptily. "You don't trust me?"

"Frankly, I don't trust anyone, and I wouldn't put it past him to turn your history into an opportunity for collusion," Glinda says. "I loved Elphaba dearly, you see, and I admire what she undertook when she chose to rebel against her father, but I'm not willing to repeat her mistakes."

This is an approach that begets more respect in Melena than she will ever admit to and she dwells on the steadiness of Glinda's voice, the placid intelligence that it exudes, before turning her eyes to the letter crunching under the force of her grip. It is marked with neither his name nor hers. She feels it thrumming against her hands, alive, and she doesn't move as thoughts wheel through her brain, pining, seething, warring, and threatening to jeopardize all that she's won with hard months of loss.

 _I will not_ , she decides.

The thoughts scatter at once.

"Did he give the order?" she says. "Is he the one who summoned Dorothy to Oz?"

"I can't be sure," Glinda admits. "I imagine that Morrible did the actual summoning, but I doubt he did any impeding. He'd had designs on Munchkinland for years."

"And when would the order have been given?" Melena asks.

"The night of my engagement ball."

The information is so scalding, so forceful, that Melena almost cries out from the pain. She served up her daughter to a charlatan, after all, and then she did it again as if it was a move that made sense – and it did to some deluded part of her. It's a danger, that part. If she sets it free, she'll take him in and let him leave as many times as he pleases, provided he returns often enough to make her feel clever and beautiful and wanted.

 _I make myself so ill_ , she thinks. Her hands jerk.

She does it before she can overrule the impulse. The envelope flutters to the floor, discarded. The letter glides into her hands, where it is torn in two, in four, in eight, in sixteen, and then gathered into a neat pile and passed back to an astonished Glinda. He will not be compromising Melena again. She needs her anger to remain pure; it's how she survives. She brushes a jagged shred from her lap and smiles at Glinda, who stares at the wreckage of the words that were to be her answers.

"I…" Glinda fumbles for a response that will indicate poise. "I can't say that I boast any deep understanding of your inner life, but I can hardly condemn all of your behaviour."

"How wonderful to hear."

Glinda masters her disbelief and smirks. "You can be as curt as you'd like," she says, "but don't forget that I was your guest for half a summer, and I know that you went to lengths to protect her. Every time your husband looked her way, you tensed – and she told me of your discussions after I'd left for the Vinkus. It meant a great deal to her that you read those books."

The wall behind Glinda is unadorned; Melena wonders what became of the plaques that once hung there. She will not think about what has just been said. She will not think about the past. She shakes the brunt of the discomfort and when she comes to, Glinda is still reminiscing: "You were always adamant that Nessa accompany her into town—"

"I don't mean to be abrupt, Lady Glinda," Melena interjects, "but you've delivered the letter and you've insinuated that I am weak-minded enough to entertain plots from the man who commissioned the deaths of my daughters. Is there anything more that you require of me before I take my leave?"

"Your presence is disconcerting to the governor," Glinda says plainly.

Melena lets out a brief peal of laughter. "Is that a kind way of evicting me?"

"Actually, it's precisely why I'd like you to stay." Glinda flattens her arms against the desk, arching inward, and somehow the flourish resolves their mutual distaste, making them into co-conspirators. "I can't impose another governor on Munchkinland – not yet. But I don't trust Bfee."

"With good reason," Melena says.

Glinda leans back in the chair and clasps her hands again. "I understand that you've just come into property in the county of Dead Trees, which is sufficient grounds for me to elevate you to the council. When that happens, I'd like you to serve as my eyes in Munchkinland."

"What does that entail?"

"Vigilance. Counsel. The occasional dispute. Seeing as Bfee is already out of hand and showing no signs of improvement, you'll have to veto the worst of his schemes until I can interfere. He'll fight you on everything that benefits the land and the citizens." Glinda's voice takes on a softer note. "If you can, try to safeguard the vulnerable populations: the Animals, the poor, and so on."

"I haven't yet agreed to be your stand-in," Melena points out.

Glinda smiles. "No one close to Elphaba would refuse the chance to better society – and to spite those who participated in wronging her."

Melena offers neither a stance nor a reply.

"I've been told that Munchkinland is verging on its most severe drought in years and I don't expect Bfee to handle the impending difficulties with any grace," Glinda says. "What would you recommend?"

The rapt look on Glinda's face is Melena's insight into the fact that she is being tested. She ponders a few courses of action and then selects one, saying, "Divine wells in the outer regions. Fortify the markets with crops from towns that can spare them. Fund land renewal projects. Do what you can to give the people an illusion of progress." For whatever reason, Melena finds herself set upon excelling, so she adds, "None of it will turn up water in the long run; there's no water to be turned up. But it will buy you time for other strategies and win you their favour."

Glinda nods sagely. "Yes. That'll do. If we can't give them fear, we'll give them hope."

Lapsing into silence, Melena gives in and scrutinizes. There is a sharpness in the depths of Glinda's blue eyes that creates the impression that she can spot three openings where anyone else would be strapped to notice one. It is almost unnerving. Melena's gaze then falls to Glinda's hands, pale and smooth and capable, neatly folded and motionless on the desk. In her lap, Melena's own hands fidget. Dirt is still caked under the nails.

"What is your investment in the future, Glinda?" she asks. "What are you hoping to accomplish?"

"I intend to do right by Oz," Glinda says, with confidence.

Melena can't keep the derision from her face. "Is that so?"

"You don't believe I can?"

"No, I don't believe you can," Melena says, just as certain of her claim. "What's more, I believe you're a fool for trying."

Glinda squares her shoulders, bristling, and Melena is suddenly reminded of the fact that the throne minister is not twenty-four years old. The trace of youth, of stubborn hope and resilience, is still upon her – and yet it is repurposed; funnelled into the myth of goodness that she persists in. Melena regards this through a cloud of disdain and it occurs to her that Glinda is little more and little less than another act in the same play, vastly different from Oz's recent procession of disappointing rulers and still the product of their methods.

"If you're suggesting the outlook that I think you're suggesting, then I disagree," Glinda says. "After all that's happened, I'm not willing to live my life with callousness for a shield."

"Then don't expect to be living it particularly long," Melena says.

Glinda hesitates. "Again, I disagree."

"Why? There's nothing about this mess that can be rectified." Melena's tone is scathing. "Your friends will remain dead and the Ozians will find new witches to blame – it will be you, if you're not careful. They'll squabble and they'll rejoice and they'll starve the same as they've always done, and in the process they'll obliterate the last of the goodness that you flaunt so."

"They will do as I tell them," Glinda says thinly.

"For as long as it suits them," Melena retorts. She lurches back, chair skidding, standing so as to wrangle the last of her patience and hasten her own dismissal. "Now, if you don't mind, I wish to conclude this interview – unless you intend to disagree with me again?"

The tension in Glinda's posture makes it evident that she is none too pleased with the barb, resentful even, to a degree that will not be forgotten any time soon, but she disguises most of the chagrin with an inscrutable mask and rises to call an official end to the meeting. They briefly press each other's hands.

"I wish you the best in your endeavours, Lady Glinda," Melena says. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Outside the study, Melena slumps against the wall and exhales a sigh, relieved to be free of the deadly shadow that Glinda casts from the high ground. Her fingers wrap tighter around the neck of the bottle that has accompanied her out of the meeting, that will accompany for a long time yet, and she gathers herself up and starts down the corridor, thinking on all that is behind her. She feels splintered; riven by a network of jagged cracks running this way, that way, seguing to her core and threatening to overturn the fragile balance that keeps her upright. But there is something else, something rising, a hunger, a hysteria, and for once it is as though she is positioned at a beginning rather than an ending. There is a whole past in her midst and more to come, a host of mistakes and a series of plans, and Glinda has granted her what she's needed to pair the fragments.

When she reaches her chambers, she perches on the edge of the bed and tucks the bottle in amongst the pillows. She collapses backwards and fixes her eyes on the junction where the wall joins with the ceiling, where a cobweb swings in the breeze that swishes through the open window. She thinks on all that is ahead and she feels prepared.

She does not sleep and she will not forget.

.

* * *

 **A/N:** Did you know that there's an actual term for a mother without any children? Yeah.

It's "Queen of the Seven Kingdoms."

(Which is basically my dork way of saying that a good portion of this chapter was inspired by Cersei Lannister, and let it be known that it took me 9.5k+ words to do what Lena Headey can do with 40 seconds and no dialogue.)

Anyway, that's all I've got for you. This story took me down a pretty tough road at times, but I'm glad I buckled down and wrote it, and I'm glad you read it! I'd love to know your thoughts on the ending, or the story as a whole, or just Melena Thropp in general. I'm endlessly fascinated by this woman and her motivations and decisions - and always up for a discussion!


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